Bricks Review 2026: The Spreadsheet That Finally Gets AI Right

📋 Overview

If you’ve ever spent hours manually updating spreadsheets only to find errors, you’re not alone. A 2025 study by the Data Analysis Institute revealed that knowledge workers waste an average of 9 hours per week on manual data tasks. Bricks, built by a team of ex-Googlers and data scientists, puts an end to that. This AI-powered spreadsheet isn’t just a pretty interface-it understands natural language, executes complex formulas, and generates charts in seconds. While competitors like Airtable charge $20/user/month and Smartsheet starts at $14/user/month, Bricks’ free tier handles 5,000 rows with unlimited AI queries. The real reason to choose Bricks? Its AI doesn’t just automate calculations-it explains the logic behind them.

⚡ Key Features

Bricks’ AI Formula Builder is a game-changer. You describe what you need (“calculate quarterly sales growth if revenue exceeds 10%”) and it writes the formula. Before, you’d spend 15 minutes per formula; now, it’s done in 2 seconds. Then there’s ChartAI: just say “show revenue trend by region” and it auto-generates a publication-ready chart. A marketing manager I know cut her reporting time from 3 hours to 12 minutes using this. DataClean, meanwhile, fixes inconsistent formatting in 80% less time-no more manually correcting 500-row CSV imports. One gotcha: complex multi-table joins sometimes require tweaking the natural language prompt to be ultra-specific.

🎯 Use Cases

1. A financial analyst at a fintech startup uses Bricks’ AI Formula Builder to automate monthly P&L reports, cutting reconciliation time from 4 hours to 30 minutes per report and reducing errors by 95%. They previously used Excel with VBA macros that required constant debugging. 2. A product manager at an e-commerce company relies on ChartAI to generate real-time sales dashboards, reducing their weekly reporting workload by 70% compared to manual Google Sheets updates. 3. A logistics coordinator uses DataClean to process 1,000-row shipment spreadsheets, eliminating 2 hours of daily manual data cleaning that used to cause 15% error rates with traditional methods.

⚠️ Limitations

1. For highly complex, multi-source data integrations (e.g., combining CRM, ERP, and web analytics data), Bricks can be slow. Look at Airtable’s $20/user/month plan instead. 2. The AI occasionally misinterprets vague natural language queries, especially with financial jargon. Smartsheet’s more structured approach handles this better at $14/user/month. 3. When collaborating on massive datasets (50k+ rows), Bricks’ performance dips. Excel still wins for pure data volume, though it lacks AI.

💰 Pricing & Value

Free: 5,000 rows, unlimited AI queries. Pro: $10/user/month (billed annually) for 50,000 rows and priority support. Team: $15/user/month for 250,000 rows and advanced collaboration. Hidden costs: Overages at $2 per 10,000 rows beyond limits. Compared to Airtable’s $20/user/month base and Smartsheet’s $14 entry point, Bricks gives you 3x the row capacity at half the cost.

✅ Verdict

Buy Bricks if you’re a data-driven professional tired of manual spreadsheet work and need AI automation at scale. Perfect for analysts, marketers, and operations managers with budgets under $500/month. Don’t buy if you need enterprise-grade integrations-switch to Airtable instead. One upgrade would make it perfect: native ERP connectors that cost less than $50/month.