Happy Valley

Display vs Microsoft Excel

Display and Microsoft Excel are both personal productivity tools. Display is aimed at developers and small businesses, while Microsoft Excel is aimed at small businesses and enterprise. Microsoft Excel costs less, from $9.99/mo versus $12/mo for Display. Both have a free plan.

Display

Shared workspace where AI agents publish docs, prototypes and apps

Microsoft Excel

The standard spreadsheet for analysis, modeling and reporting

PricingFreemium · $12Freemium · $10
Starting price$12/mo$9.99/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial—30 days
Built forDevelopers, Small businesses, Enterprise, FreelancersSmall businesses, Enterprise, Freelancers
Platformswebweb, macos, windows, ios, android
CountryEEUS · 1985
Rating——

Choose Display if

Product and engineering teams that already generate HTML docs and prototypes with coding agents and want one private place to share, review and version them.

  • Works with any agent, so Claude and Codex users can edit the same doc
  • Unlimited free viewers and commenters on every plan
  • Flat Team price covers up to 150 editors

Look elsewhere if: Teams that mainly need a classic wiki or office-file storage with mature compliance paperwork (Confluence, Google Drive).

Choose Microsoft Excel if

Finance, accounting and analyst teams that need the deepest spreadsheet features and the industry standard file format.

  • Industry standard skills and file format
  • Unmatched depth for financial modeling and analysis
  • Handles large datasets on the desktop

Look elsewhere if: Teams that mostly collaborate live in the browser on simple sheets (Google Sheets) or need a relational database with views (Airtable).

Display vs Microsoft Excel pricing

Display

  • Free$01 editor, 3 gated docs, 50 MB, unlimited viewers
  • Solo$12/mo1 editor, 5 GB, version history; $9/mo billed yearly
  • Team$79/moUp to 150 editors, 100 GB, Shared Spaces; $59/mo yearly
  • Business$265/mo1 TB, 365-day audit logs, sharing controls; $199/mo yearly
  • EnterpriseCustom150+ editors, SAML SSO, signed DPA, SLA, custom storage

Microsoft Excel

  • Excel for the web$0Free with a Microsoft account, reduced feature set
  • Microsoft 365 Personal$9.99/mo$99.99/yr; 1 person, desktop apps, Copilot, 1 TB
  • Microsoft 365 Family$12.99/mo$129.99/yr; up to 6 people, 1 TB each
  • Microsoft 365 Premium$19.99/mo$199.99/yr; higher Copilot limits and advanced AI
  • Office Home 2024$179.99/one-timePerpetual Excel, Word, PowerPoint for 1 PC or Mac

Display · Key features

  • Publish agent-made HTML and Markdown docs to stable private URLs
  • MCP server, CLI and Claude connector for agents such as Codex and Cursor
  • Version on every publish, with restore on Solo and higher plans
  • Line-level comments that agents can read and resolve
  • In-browser editing for people with edit access
  • Spaces and folders for docs, images, PDFs and data files

Cons

  • No SOC 2 report yet, per the vendor's security page
  • SAML single sign-on only on the custom Enterprise plan
  • Version history and folders require at least the paid Solo plan

Microsoft Excel · Key features

  • Dynamic array formulas including XLOOKUP, FILTER and LAMBDA
  • PivotTables, PivotCharts and a wide range of chart types
  • Power Query to import, clean and reshape data from many sources
  • Power Pivot data models for large multi-table analysis
  • Python in Excel for analysis and visualization in the grid
  • Copilot to generate formulas, analyses and summaries from prompts

Cons

  • Advanced features have a steep learning curve
  • Web version lacks some desktop features
  • Emailed copies lead to version chaos

Display vs Microsoft Excel: FAQ

Which is cheaper, Display or Microsoft Excel?

Microsoft Excel starts at $9.99/mo and Display at $12/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.

Do Display and Microsoft Excel have a free plan?

Yes, both Display and Microsoft Excel have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Not sure yet?