Spreadsheet row & cell limits, sourced

Tool	Row limit	Column limit	Cell limit
Microsoft Excel	1,048,576	16,384	~17.2 billion (row × column ceiling)
Google Sheets	No fixed row cap — bounded by the cell total	18,278	10,000,000 total per spreadsheet, across all tabs
Apple Numbers	1,000,000	1,000	~1 billion (row × column ceiling; not practically reachable)
LibreOffice Calc	1,048,576	16,384	~1.07 billion (row × column ceiling)
Row Zero (Free)	10s of millions	No practical limit in this range	10s of millions of rows, 5GB/workbook
Row Zero (Enterprise)	1 billion+	No practical limit in this range	Scales with the data plane

Limits reflect each vendor’s publicly documented specifications, and community-verified figures where a vendor publishes none. Software vendors move these over time — Google, for instance, has piloted a higher cell limit — so verify directly with the vendor before relying on a figure for a critical decision.

Notes on each limit

Microsoft Excel

Unchanged since the 2007 .xlsx format replaced .xls and its 65,536-row cap. The row × column ceiling is over 17 billion cells, but performance degrades long before that as formulas, formatting, and the used range grow.

Google Sheets

Sheets caps total cells across every tab rather than capping rows. Google has piloted a beta doubling this to 20 million cells for some Workspace organizations; check your organization's current limit if it matters for a specific project.

Apple Numbers

Apple does not publish this figure. It is established through testing and matches consistently across independent sources. Performance problems are commonly reported well before the row cap.

LibreOffice Calc

Matches Excel's modern limits in current versions, up from a 65,536-row cap in older releases. Practical performance depends heavily on available memory.

Row Zero (Free)

Row Zero does not publish a fixed row cap the way desktop spreadsheet tools do — the constraint is workbook storage (5GB/workbook) — and its free plan is described as handling tens of millions of rows.

Row Zero (Enterprise)

Enterprise plans are described as scaling past 1 billion rows.

The number that matters most here is the one nobody advertises: what happens when you exceed it. Most tools do not refuse the file. They open it, drop the rows past the limit, and show you something that looks complete. Check the source row count against what opened before trusting any total you take from a file near its ceiling.