Tiller vs Voice Sheet: Two Ways to Budget in Sheets

Tiller and Voice Sheet both keep your budget in a spreadsheet you own, but they fill it in different ways. Tiller connects to your bank and imports transactions into Google Sheets or Excel automatically for $99 a year. Voice Sheet has no bank link: you log each purchase from your phone with a form or your voice. Choose Tiller for automation, Voice Sheet for privacy and cash.

If you're searching for a Tiller alternative, the real question is which of those two jobs you want done. This guide sets out the facts side by side, how each tool works day to day, what each costs, and how to use both.

Tiller vs Voice Sheet: the facts table

Tiller details below come from tiller.com and Tiller's help centre, checked in October 2026. Prices change, so check both pricing pages before you buy.

Three things Tiller does better, plainly:

• It catches every card transaction without effort. If you forget to log a $6 coffee, Tiller doesn't.
• It tracks balances and net worth across accounts. Voice Sheet only knows what you enter.
• It works in Excel. Voice Sheet is Google Sheets only.

How Tiller works

Tiller is a bank feed for spreadsheets. You sign up with a Google or Microsoft account, connect your bank and card accounts, and Tiller adds new transactions and balances to a Transactions sheet each day. It uses two data aggregators, Yodlee and Plaid, so if one struggles with your bank you can try the other.

On top of the feed sits the Foundation Template, with tabs for budgets, income, balances, debt payoff and net worth. AutoCat applies your own rules, such as "anything from Trader Joe's is Groceries", so most rows arrive already categorised. A daily email summarises yesterday's activity.

Tiller says it never sees or stores your bank login, doesn't sell data to advertisers and doesn't run ads. Your transaction history still passes through an aggregator on its way to your sheet, though. Our explainer on what Plaid is covers what those services collect, and is it safe to link your bank to a budgeting app? weighs up the risk.

How Voice Sheet works

Voice Sheet starts from the other end. It syncs with Google Sheets and reads your sheet's column names, then builds an entry form on your phone from them. Each entry becomes a new row in your sheet, written directly from your phone. There is no bank linking and no Voice Sheet server holding your entries.

A typical day looks like this:

1. You buy something. Groceries, a taxi, a coffee paid in cash.
2. You log it on your phone. Tap through the form, or say "groceries, forty-two dollars, Costco" and it fills in Date, Amount, Category and Note (3 voice entries a day free, unlimited on Premium).
3. The row lands in your sheet. If you're offline, it queues and syncs when you're back online.
4. Your formulas update. The budget dashboard or your own SUMIFS show what's left this month.

For voice entry, your phone's own speech recognition turns speech into text, and that text plus your column names goes to Google Gemini to match words to columns. Audio isn't uploaded (the Premium Ask Anything assistant is the one exception: it sends your recording to Google Gemini after a one-time notice). Voice input listens in your app language (8 languages).

What Voice Sheet won't do: import bank transactions, scan receipts or spot subscriptions for you. Every row is one you chose to record.

Is Voice Sheet a good Tiller alternative?

It's a good Tiller alternative if the part of Tiller you value is the spreadsheet, not the feed. It isn't one if what you want is every transaction appearing without lifting a finger.

Tiller suits you if:

• You have several cards and accounts and want them all in one place automatically.
• You care about balances, net worth and debt payoff as much as spending.
• You're happy for an aggregator to access your bank data.
• You use Excel, or both Excel and Google Sheets.

Voice Sheet suits you if:

• You don't want any bank connection. The Day 0 guide to tracking expenses without linking your bank explains why many people choose that.
• A lot of your spending is cash, shared or abroad, where feeds miss details or arrive late. See how to track cash spending.
• You want to record purchases as they happen, which tends to make you more aware of spending than reviewing a feed later.
• Your bank isn't supported by aggregators, or keeps disconnecting.

Neither approach is wrong. Tiller trades privacy for convenience; Voice Sheet trades a few seconds per purchase for full control. If your doubts are more about spreadsheets versus apps in general, our Mint alternative spreadsheet guide shows how far a plain Google Sheet goes.

What each one costs

Prices as of October 2026:

The free plan includes the Google Sheets connection, forms built from your columns, all 7 templates, the budget dashboard, offline sync, reminders, 3 voice entries a day and 1 Quick Capture or widget entry a day. Full details are on the pricing page.

Tiller's price buys the bank feed. That's real work it does for you, and for someone with six accounts it may save more time than $99 is worth. If you'd log purchases by hand anyway, you're paying for automation you don't use.

Can you use Tiller and Voice Sheet together?

Yes, and for some people it's the best of both. A sensible split:

1. Let Tiller handle cards and bank accounts. Those rows arrive in Tiller's Transactions sheet as usual.
2. Use Voice Sheet for what the feed misses: cash, money a partner owes you, or purchases you want to note in more detail. Point it at a separate tab or spreadsheet with simple columns such as Date, Amount, Category and Note.
3. Combine them on a summary tab. A SUMIFS over each source, added together, gives one monthly total per category. Our SUMIFS by month guide has the formulas.

Two cautions. Keep Voice Sheet out of Tiller's own Transactions sheet, because Tiller manages that sheet's structure and ID columns. And don't log a card purchase in both places, or it counts twice. A simple rule, cash in Voice Sheet and cards in Tiller, avoids that.

The short version

• Tiller is a bank feed for spreadsheets: automatic, works with Google Sheets and Excel, and costs $99 a year as of October 2026.
• Voice Sheet is a phone entry app for Google Sheets: no bank link, a free plan with 3 voice entries a day, and unlimited voice on Premium.
• Tiller is better for hands-off tracking of many accounts, balances and net worth.
• Voice Sheet is the better Tiller alternative if you want no bank connection, track a lot of cash, or want to log spending as it happens.
• You can run both: Tiller for cards, Voice Sheet for cash, joined on one summary tab.