Top 8 AI Excel Tools to Boost Productivity: Tested

79% of companies report that they’ve already adopted AI agents, and two-thirds of those users say these agents have boosted productivity in measurable ways.¹ We test and compare eight AI Excel tools to see how they perform and what they do best:

Performance of Excel AI tools

*Sensitivity analysis, IRR, and similar choices such as clarifying the approach and specifying how I want the answer to be presented.

Read key features for more information.

Read the benchmark section for more information on the performance test.

Table: Market presence and pricing comparison

“NA” indicates that no public information was found.

Tryshortcut

What it does

Tryshortcut is an AI tool that helps you build and manage Excel spreadsheets, especially financial models, while putting strong focus on data privacy and security. It provides step-by-step solutions and asks for your preferences before completing complex tasks.

Our experience

Accuracy was around 60% for tasks we tested. The tool provides full explanations, walking through each step. It asks users for preferences, such as:

• Do you want a sensitivity analysis?
• Should answers be detailed or short?
• Do you need follow-up calculations?

However, data analysis took longer than expected.

Figure 1. TryShortcut Excel sheet with chat

Tryshortcut stands out with its ability to not only compute and explain results but also to deliver advanced data insights and visuals.

What it’s good at

• User control: Users keep full ownership of the files and can download used models anytime, delete processing data, control file access, and opt out of tracking.
• Financial modeling support: Shortcut can assist in building financial models and making financial forecasts. It can also ask if you want extras, like a sensitivity analysis or a detailed explanation. It adapts to your preferences.

Formulabot

What it does

Formulabot is an AI tool that helps with data tasks in Excel, Google Sheets, and other formats. You can ask questions in plain language, and it will turn them into charts, advanced formulas, SQL queries, or models. It also helps explain complex formulas and automate repetitive tasks.

Formulabot handles calculations and explanations well, though it lacks tools for deeper analytical exploration.

Our experience

The platform gave correct answers in about 60% of cases. However, it seems that the wrong answers are rooted from the misunderstanding of the question. Its explanations were very detailed, like a step-by-step lesson. It’s helpful for learning how Excel formulas work or understanding a data model. It offered useful trend summaries and insights. The free version doesn’t create charts, even though it claims to support them.

What it’s good at

• Text to formula or code: Turn plain text into Excel formulas, SQL queries, VBA scripts, or Google Apps Scripts, quickly and without coding.
• Data integration and cleaning: Upload files, connect to multiple data sources, and combine your data. The tool helps clean and transform it for analyzing data.
• Spreadsheet creation: You can convert PDFs or plain text into spreadsheets automatically.

GPTExcel

What it does

GPTExcel is an AI-powered tool that helps you work with spreadsheets. You can use it to generate formulas, SQL queries, scripts, charts, graphs, and more. It supports Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc, and Airtable. You can also chat with your file to ask questions or get actionable insights.

Our experience

The accuracy rate was around 40% in our tests. The tool often misunderstood the question or gave incomplete results. It did not provide clear or detailed explanations. Its multi-language function worked well and handled different languages smoothly.

Figure 2. Dashboard of GPTExcel

GPTExcel AI Chat Bot is reliable for getting answers and understanding formulas, but it doesn’t go beyond the basics.

What it’s good at

• Script and formula generator: GPTExcel can generate Excel formulas, SQL queries, regex patterns, and automation scripts (VBA or Google Apps Script).
• Multi-language support: The bot works in over 50 languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, and French.

AJELIX

What it does

AJELIX is an AI tool designed to help business users work more efficiently with Excel files. It helps automate tasks, create business forms, and build custom solutions, all through simple interactions with AI.

AJELIX focuses on performing calculations but doesn’t offer much in terms of interpretation or data analysis.

Our experience

AJELIX gave detailed solutions when prompted. The accuracy rate in our tests was around 40%. Errors were mostly due to incorrect calculations, not misreading the question.

What it’s good at

• Data cleaning and transformation: It can find errors, remove them, and reshape your data for better use. This works across Excel and other formats.

ExcelAIBot

What it does

ExcelAIBot helps you work with Excel and Google Sheets using plain language. You can ask it to:

• Excel formula generator based on your text prompt
• Explain what a complex Excel formula does
• Write and explain VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code

ExcelAIBot is helpful for understanding spreadsheet logic, even though it can’t run actual complex calculations.

Our experience

Users can ask for help with either Excel or Google Sheets. Requests can involve generating new formulas or understanding existing ones. The tool explains how parts of a complex formula work, but may not provide a complete formula to solve the whole problem. It is useful for solving short, structured problems.

What it’s good at

• Simple tasks: It handles basic and medium-level requests well, like creating a PMT (payment) formula step by step.
• Quick explanations: It gives a clear overview of what a formula does.
• VBA help: It writes short VBA scripts and explains how they work.

Numerous

What it does

Numerous is an AI add-on for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.

Numerous has limited capabilities, as it neither computes, explains, nor supports data interpretation.

Our experience

It can identify Excel formulas from brief text inputs. Some advanced features, like sentiment analysis and tone rewriting, are available but limited in depth. Best used for content tasks rather than numerical problem solving.

What it’s good at

• Content tasks: Numerous can summarize long text, rewrite it in a different tone, translate content, and categorize open-ended responses. It also helps clean and normalize messy data.
• Digital marketing help: The tool can generate ad copy, keywords, Facebook ad structures, and SEO content. It’s useful for automating parts of marketing campaigns.

Microsoft Copilot

What it does

Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built into Microsoft 365 tools like Excel, Word, and Teams. It helps you write, analyze, summarize, and automate tasks using your existing files and data. You can also chat with it to get help or use agents to handle repetitive tasks.

Microsoft claims that the Copilot chat can make calculations, provide explanations, and conduct extra analysis. Although the website of the vendor indicates that Microsoft Copilot has a free trial, the chatbot is not included.

What it’s good at

• Easy access for Microsoft users: If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription and an Entra account, you can use Copilot Chat at no extra cost. Some advanced agent tools are charged by usage.

Arcwise

What it does

Arcwise is an AI data analyst that works inside your spreadsheet, especially Google Sheets. It helps users explore, understand, and visualize the given spreadsheet data.

Arcwise claims that the Excel AI tool chat can make calculations, provide explanations, and conduct extra analysis.

What it’s good at

• Data visualization: Answers can be turned into charts automatically, making it easier to spot insights.
• Data exploration and correction: You can dig deeper into results, correct source data, and see what’s causing changes in your numbers.
• Custom AI models: You can bring your own model or use Arcwise’s version. It adapts to your business data and context.

Evaluation of AI-powered Excel solutions

Benchmark

We tested each AI Excel tool using five scenarios. These scenarios cover calculations of present value, future value, payment amount, investment return, and discounted free cash flow for a project based on given data.

Each question has a specific correct answer. We measured the tools’ accuracy within a 1% error margin. The results are shown in the graph.

Features of tools

We also scored each tool on these capabilities:

Calculation

AI-Excel tools can run formulas and queries for you. They handle tasks like sums, averages, loan payments, and database lookups.

This saves you from typing complex formulas by hand.

Explanation

They break down the steps behind each formula or script. You can see how each part works in plain language.

This helps you learn and trust the results.

Extra analysis

Some tools can analyze data based on users’ preferences, and run “what-if” scenarios, sensitivity analysis etc.

This deeper insight lets you explore your data without leaving the spreadsheet.

FAQs

Further reading

• Enterprise AI Assistant to Boost Productivity
• Emotion AI Tools Backed by Real-World Testing
• Open Source HRIS Tools with Key Features 

External Links

• 1. AI agent survey: PwC .