Worthtally vs a spreadsheet: should you keep tracking net worth in Excel or Sheets?
Last updated: 18 September 2026
A spreadsheet is the honest baseline. It is free, you own the file, and one row per month with assets minus debts is a real net worth tracker. Worthtally exists for the point where the spreadsheet stops being kept up: when a sold asset sits in the total for a year, when a currency conversion goes stale, or when you need a trend, a planner or a tax report and the formulas grow past what you want to maintain.
Where the spreadsheet wins
- It is free forever, on every device, and nobody can change the price.
- You can model anything. No app will match a formula you wrote for your own situation.
- The file is portable. Excel, Numbers, Sheets and LibreOffice all open it.
Where Worthtally wins
- Transactions, not just balances. A transaction ledger, so the monthly number comes from what actually happened.
- The trend is built in. Month-over-month net worth, asset allocation, and history you do not have to chart by hand.
- Live exchange rates in your home currency, from a read-only public feed, so a foreign account stops going stale.
- Planners. FIRE, retirement, emergency fund and debt payoff, with what-if scenarios, without maintaining formulas.
- A tax-year pack. Pro prints a PDF with a quarterly breakdown and a capital-gains appendix, plus QIF, OFX and QBO exports for an accountant.
- The same manual-entry habit. Worthtally never asks for a bank password. You type balances in, the same as you do today.
What stays the same
- Your data stays yours. Worthtally stores everything in a database on your device. No account, no cloud, no server we run.
- You can leave any time. CSV, JSON and Markdown export are free at every tier, so the spreadsheet is always one export away.
- You can bring the spreadsheet in. CSV import takes your existing rows.
How Worthtally does it
Everyday tracking, including unlimited accounts and 90 days of history, is always free. Pro adds full history and is $9.99 a year on the App Store and Google Play, or $29.99 once for lifetime access on every platform. Windows is lifetime only. One Apple purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac, with Family Sharing. Nothing forces you into a subscription.
The free tier is not a demo. You get all nine account kinds (cash, checking, savings, investment, retirement, crypto, real estate, vehicle and debt), the transaction ledger, goals, the FIRE, retirement, emergency and debt planners, live exchange rates, and export to CSV, JSON or Markdown at any time. Budgets, categories, tags, bills and what-if scenarios are Pro.
Worthtally is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, the Mac App Store, Google Play for Android, and the Microsoft Store for Windows. It is the same app on each.
Get Worthtally
Related questions
- Can I import my existing spreadsheet?
- Yes, through CSV import, in the free tier.
- Can I get my data back out as a spreadsheet?
- Yes, at any time and for free. Export to CSV and open it in Excel, Numbers or Sheets.
- Do I lose anything by keeping both?
- No. Many people keep the spreadsheet for modelling and use Worthtally as the record. Export monthly and paste the totals across.
Worthtally is a Trueframe Digital app. Pay once, no account, your data stays on your device. See the Worthtally page for screenshots, the full feature list and prices.