The short version
A spreadsheet is free, infinitely flexible and yours forever; ProjectionLab saves you the maintenance and produces charts you will actually look at. The honest cost of the spreadsheet is the hours, and the silent errors you never find.
Why people compare them
Anyone who has built their own retirement model eventually asks whether a paid tool beats their spreadsheet.
Price and fit, side by side
| Feature | ProjectionLab | A custom Excel spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | ProjectionLabFree tier, then $129 per year | A custom Excel spreadsheetFree tier, then £84.99 per year |
| Free tier | ProjectionLabYes | A custom Excel spreadsheetYes |
| Billed in pounds | ProjectionLabNo | A custom Excel spreadsheetYes |
| Best for | ProjectionLabConfident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves | A custom Excel spreadsheetPeople who want total control over every assumption and genuinely enjoy building the model |
Where ProjectionLab wins
- Genuinely powerful scenario and projection modelling
- A real free tier, so you can try the core idea without paying
- Strong with Monte Carlo analysis and detailed assumptions
Where A custom Excel spreadsheet wins
- Complete flexibility: if you can define the rule, you can model it, with no vendor deciding what is supported
- No subscription lock-in to a planning vendor, and your file keeps working whatever happens to any company
- Your data never leaves your machine unless you choose to sync it, so nothing is shared with a third party
Where both fall short
- Neither applies UK tax rules to what it shows you.
- Both are built US-first, so UK users pay in dollars and work around US assumptions.
If neither is quite right
If what you actually want is the retirement answer rather than a better dashboard, that is the gap Delphina was built for: UK pensions, ISAs and tax, projected to the age you want to stop. It does not do the job ProjectionLab does for confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves, so if that is the real problem, ProjectionLab is still the better buy. Free plan is £0, no card.
ProjectionLab vs A custom Excel spreadsheet: common questions
ProjectionLab is $129 per year and A custom Excel spreadsheet is £84.99 per year. Compare the billing period before the number: an annual price and a monthly price are not the same thing.
You can, and some people do, because they solve different halves of the problem. It does mean paying for both, so add the two annual figures together before deciding.
Judge it on billing currency, Open Banking coverage and whether ISAs and pensions are handled. A custom Excel spreadsheet has the edge here, because ProjectionLab bills in a foreign currency.
ProjectionLab suits confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves. A custom Excel spreadsheet suits people who want total control over every assumption and genuinely enjoy building the model. The one that matches how you already think about money will take less setting up.
Delphina covers the gap both leave, which is UK pensions, ISAs and tax projected forward to retirement. The trade-off is that it does not do the job ProjectionLab does for confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves, so if that is the real need, pick one of these two.