Kubera vs a spreadsheet
The sheet is the right tool for longer than software companies admit. Where it wins, where it breaks, and what $250 a year buys.
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about kubera
about kubera
Most Kubera customers arrived from a spreadsheet, and most of them liked their spreadsheet. It was free, it did exactly what they built it to do, and it stopped getting updated the month life got busy. This page is honest about both sides: the sheet is the right tool for longer than software companies admit, and there is a point where it is not.
Facts checked on 5 October 2026. Competitor prices and limits come from their own sites and help centres where they publish them; where they do not, the page says who reported the figure.
| Kubera | a spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $250 a year. | Free. Tiller adds bank feeds to Sheets or Excel for $99 a year. |
| Balances | Connected at 20,000+ institutions in 40+ countries; refreshed automatically. | Typed in. With Tiller: fed in daily from 10,000+ US institutions, in USD. |
| Prices | Stocks on US, Canadian, UK, European and Asian exchanges; crypto on 20+ exchanges and 18 chains; homes and cars by AI appraiser; FX every two hours. | GOOGLEFINANCE gives stock quotes and FX rates, delayed up to 20 minutes and not from all markets; no mutual-fund attributes; crypto undocumented and partial. |
| History | A daily snapshot of everything from the day you connect. | Only what you saved. GOOGLEFINANCE historical data is not available through the API or Apps Script. |
| Currencies | Any asset in any currency, converted to your base currency. | Your own FX formulas, maintained by you. |
| Private investments | Commitments, calls and distributions on a schedule; IRR per position; documents attached. | XIRR on a column of dated cash flows; reminders and documents elsewhere. |
| Forecasts | Fast Forward: scenarios five, ten, twenty years out, fed by your real balances and your capital-call schedule. | Whatever you model. |
| Sharing | Collaborators with the access you choose; nested portfolios on Black; read-only AI connection. | Share the file, all of it, with anyone. |
| If you die | Dead Man’s Switch sends everything to the person you named. | Someone needs the link and the password, and to know the sheet exists. |
| Lock-in | Download everything, then delete your account yourself, any time. | None. It is your file. |
It is free, it is yours, and it has no opinion. You can model a sabbatical, a house purchase and a bad decade in one tab and nobody can stop you. For a person with four accounts in one country who updates it on the first of the month, a sheet is the right tool and Kubera would be $250 a year for a nicer version of a thing that already works. Tiller, for $99 a year, feeds US bank and brokerage balances into the sheet daily, which removes most of the typing for an American household.
The sheet breaks on the inputs. GOOGLEFINANCE gives you share prices and currency rates, delayed, not from every market, with no mutual-fund attributes and no official crypto. Everything else is typed: the bank balances, the house, the fund that sent a capital call, the wallet. Each one is a chore you can skip, so you skip it, and the number drifts from true. The history is the second break: a spreadsheet only knows the values you saved, and Google’s historical-price function is not available programmatically, so the chart of your net worth is as long as your discipline.
The third break is other people. A sheet is shared whole or not at all; there is no view where your partner sees the household and not your angel portfolio, or your adviser sees the managed accounts and not the rest. And when something happens to you, the sheet is a link in a drive someone may not know to look in.
Inputs that fill themselves: balances from 20,000+ institutions in 40+ countries, prices from the exchanges, crypto from the exchanges and chains, FX every two hours, home and car values by AI appraiser, and AI import for the statements that will not connect. A daily history that starts the day you connect and never needs saving. Per-position IRR, a capital-call schedule that feeds a forecast, documents attached to the assets they describe. Access per person on Black. A read-only connection to ChatGPT or Claude. And a switch that sends all of it to the person you choose if you stop logging in.
It also buys the limits of software. Kubera does not have your custom model, and it will not budget. People who love their sheet often keep it for the modelling and let Kubera feed it the numbers.
Connect what connects. For the rest, Kubera’s AI import reads your sheet or your statements and creates the positions, so the ten years of careful rows are not wasted. The daily history begins the day you start; Kubera does not backfill. The trial is the full product for 14 days, no card.
“Before Kubera, I was cobbling together spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different platforms just to answer the basic question: 'What's my actual net worth?'”
“Has made life so much easier than trying to juggle 20 excel spreadsheets - their AI MCP integration is great as well.”
“Instead of spending hours updating balances and tracking investments, Kubera automates everything, giving me a clear, real-time view of my finances in one place.”
