Becom vs a budget spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is the most honest competitor on this list. It is free, it does exactly what you tell it, it works offline, and the file is yours in a way no subscription ever is. Most people who track money seriously start here, and plenty should stay.
What usually ends a sheet is not a missing feature. It is the third month, when the EMI balances need updating by hand and the tab for October never gets made.
| A spreadsheet | Becom | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, and the file is yours permanently. | 30 days free, then ₹199/month or ₹1,899/year. |
| Flexibility | Total. Any structure, any formula, any chart you care to build. | A fixed structure — six sections a month — that you cannot redesign. |
| Setting up a new month | Copy last month's tab and correct everything that changed. | Recurring income and expenses carry forward on their own, with loans advanced one instalment. |
| Loans and EMIs | A formula you write and a balance you remember to update. | Each loan tracks its own outstanding balance and moves a month at a time. |
| Savings rate | Whatever you defined it as, in a cell somewhere. | Worked out each month from what you recorded, on the same screen. |
| Habits, goals and journal | Another tab, or another file, or another app entirely. | In the same account, so a goal that costs money sits against the month funding it. |
| On your phone | Editable, but painful — a wide grid on a small screen. | Built for the phone first; entering a day's spending takes seconds. |
| Getting the data out | It is already a file you own. | Export the Wealth Planner to CSV whenever you want. |
Choose A spreadsheet if…
- you actually enjoy spreadsheets, and yours has survived more than a year;
- your setup is unusual and needs formulas no app would offer;
- you want to pay nothing and keep everything in a file you control.
Choose Becom if…
- you have built the sheet twice already and abandoned it twice;
- your loans are the complicated part and you would rather not maintain the balances;
- you want the habits and goals the money is for in the same place as the money.
Questions people ask
Is a spreadsheet good enough for budgeting?
For a lot of people, yes — and if yours has lasted more than a year, there is no reason to move. The failure mode is not accuracy, it is upkeep: monthly copying, balances that drift, and a phone that makes entry unpleasant enough to skip.
Can I import my spreadsheet?
Not currently. Most people enter the current month and let it carry forward from there, which takes about ten minutes; the history stays in the sheet if you want to keep it.
Can I get my data back out?
Yes. The Wealth Planner exports to CSV at any time, which opens straight back in Excel or Google Sheets.
What does Becom do that a sheet genuinely cannot?
Carry a month forward by itself, advance each loan's outstanding balance, and put the habit, the goal and the money on one screen. A sheet can be made to do the first two with enough formula work — the third means maintaining several files that do not know about each other.
Other comparisons: Becom vs Notion · Becom vs Todoist · Becom vs Habitica · Becom vs Google Keep
Excel is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation and Google Sheets of Google LLC. Becom is not affiliated with either. If you would rather stay in a sheet, our free calculators work alongside one — including EMI with prepayment.
Keep the sheet. Try the month.
Enter one month in Becom and see whether it survives to the third — the point at which most spreadsheets quietly stop.
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