The short answer
Use Excel Copilot when you are the one doing the spreadsheet work and want help in the cell you have selected: a formula suggestion, a cleaned-up column, outliers spotted, a table summarised.
Use Smalt when the spreadsheet is one part of a bigger job. Reconcile last month’s invoices against the PO sheet and list the exceptions. Pull last quarter’s campaign spend together and turn it into a review deck. Summarise headcount by team from the people sheet.
Where Excel Copilot is the right tool
It is already inside Excel, next to your data, so there is nothing to upload or hand over. For in-cell help while you work, that is exactly its job, and it does it well.
Where Smalt is the right tool
Smalt builds the workbook for you from wherever the data lives, with live formulas rather than pasted values, and hands it back with a short note on what it did and anything that looked wrong in the data. When the job continues past the spreadsheet (an email to the vendors with exceptions, a deck for Friday), it does that too. Plans are credit-based: a Free tier with 500 credits and no card, and paid plans from USD 18 a month.
Honest caveats
- For a quick formula or a tidy-up in a sheet you already have open, Excel Copilot is faster.
- Smalt works from outside Excel. You open the file it hands back.
500 free credits, no credit card. Try Smalt AI on a real workflow and see for yourself.