Excel is great for small datasets and quick formatting. But when you’re analyzing thousands (or millions) of rows, it falls apart. PondPilot lets you use SQL instead — faster, more powerful, and it runs in your browser.
Where Excel Breaks Down
Row limits: Excel caps at ~1 million rows. Real datasets are often larger.
Performance: Scrolling through 500K rows in Excel is painful. Formulas on large ranges hang.
Reproducibility: A complex Excel analysis is a maze of formulas, hidden sheets, and manual steps. Good luck replicating it next month.
Version control: You can’t meaningfully diff two Excel files. SQL queries are plain text — easy to track, share, and version.
SQL Is a Better Tool for Analysis
-- What would take VLOOKUP + pivot table + manual sorting in Excel:
SELECT
region,
product_category,
SUM(revenue) as total_revenue,
COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id) as unique_customers,
SUM(revenue) / COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id) as revenue_per_customer
FROM sales.csv
GROUP BY region, product_category
ORDER BY total_revenue DESC;
One query. Clear, readable, reproducible.
PondPilot vs Excel
| Excel | PondPilot | |
|---|---|---|
| Row limit | ~1M | Limited by browser memory (millions) |
| Speed on large data | Slow | Fast (DuckDB columnar engine) |
| Reproducibility | Low (manual steps) | High (SQL queries) |
| Cost | $100+/year | Free |
| Multi-file JOINs | VLOOKUP nightmare | JOIN clause |
| Privacy | Local (unless OneDrive) | Always local |
You Don’t Need to Learn “Real” SQL
If you can write an Excel formula, you can learn SQL. The basics — SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY — cover 90% of what you do in Excel pivot tables. PondPilot’s autocomplete helps you along the way.
Export Back to CSV
Colleagues still need Excel? Run your SQL analysis in PondPilot, export results as CSV, and they can open it in Excel. Best of both worlds.
Try It
Open PondPilot and bring a CSV you’d normally open in Excel.