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SheetCraft

How Much Would You Save Replacing SaaS With Spreadsheets?

Pick the SaaS tools you currently pay for. The calculator subtracts an honest estimate of the time you would spend on spreadsheet upkeep, valued at your hourly rate. The net number is what you would actually save in year one.

Pick the tools you currently pay for

Finance & Invoicing

Workspace / PM tools

Time tracking

Real estate

Creator tools

Your time

Your savings

SaaS subscriptions you can drop:$50/mo
Time cost of running spreadsheets (your rate):-$217/mo
Net monthly savings:$0/mo
Annual savings:$0

Assumes you'd spend half the listed hours on spreadsheet upkeep that the SaaS tools would automate. Conservative — most people who track this report less than half the assumed time once their template is set up.

Next steps

How the calculation works

SaaS cost: the sum of monthly subscription prices for the tools you checked.

Time cost of spreadsheets: we assume the spreadsheet stack adds about half of your "hours per week" input as net upkeep beyond what you would have done in the SaaS. This is the time the SaaS automation would have saved you (auto-categorizing transactions, generating invoice PDFs, pre-built reports, etc.).

Net savings: SaaS cost minus the value of your time spent on the spreadsheet upkeep. We do not let this go negative (worst case, you break even).

What we ignore: the one-time setup cost of building your spreadsheet stack (1–3 hours per tool), the value of the SaaS data exports you may want before canceling, and the cost of subscription cancellation pain. For most solo operators these are small relative to the ongoing savings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is replacing SaaS with spreadsheets actually realistic?

For tools that are essentially a list + a calculator (most freelance and small business SaaS), yes — a spreadsheet equivalent takes 1-2 hours to set up and matches the SaaS for 80–90% of use cases. The 10–20% the SaaS wins on (automatic bank transaction import, branded PDFs, integration network) you patch with manual entry or live without. For tools with real automation (Calendly auto-booking, Zapier integrations across 20 apps, complex billing logic) a spreadsheet is not a good replacement.

How accurate is the time-cost estimate?

It assumes you spend half of "hours per week" on upkeep your SaaS would have automated — for example, if you said 4 hours of weekly spreadsheet time, the calculator assumes 2 of those hours would have been saved by the SaaS. Most people who actually track this report less, since once a template is set up the weekly burden is mostly data entry that the SaaS also requires.

What if I need features the spreadsheet does not have?

Be honest in the inputs. If you genuinely use the automation that QuickBooks Live Bank Feeds provides, that is worth $30/month to you and you should not include it in your list. The calculator is most accurate when you include only tools whose features a spreadsheet would actually replace.

Does this work for businesses with employees?

Yes but the math gets more nuanced — for a 5-person team paying for ClickUp at $50/month total, dropping to spreadsheets saves $600/year but adds coordination friction that may exceed the savings. The calculator is most accurate for solo operators and very small teams. Above 5 people, dedicated SaaS usually wins on coordination overhead alone.

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