Google Sheets vs Notion for Tracking Hobbies: Which One Actually Works?

Both Google Sheets and Notion show up in every "how to track your hobbies" thread. I've used both extensively – Notion for about two years, Google Sheets for longer than that. I've built trackers in both, migrated between them, and have opinions about where each one actually holds up.

This is a practical comparison for people who want to track things like books, movies, games, or music. Not project management, not note-taking – specifically hobby tracking with data you want to analyze over time. Fair warning: I make Google Sheets trackers for a living, so I'm obviously biased toward that side – but I'll be honest about where Notion wins.

Where Notion shines

Notion databases are genuinely nice to use. You define properties (text, select, multi-select, date, number), and Notion gives you multiple views for free: table, gallery, kanban, calendar, timeline. A reading tracker with a gallery view showing book covers? That takes about five minutes to set up in Notion.

The relation and rollup properties are powerful too. You can link a "Books" database to an "Authors" database, then roll up stats from one into the other. If you care about relational data models, Notion handles this well.

Notion also looks good by default. Minimal effort gets you something visually clean. Icons, covers and toggle blocks go a long way.

Where Notion falls short

This is where I kept running into walls:

• No real charts. This is the big one. Notion has no built-in charting. If you want to see "which genre did I read most this year?" as a pie chart or "how many movies did I watch per month?" as a bar chart, you need a third-party integration. The built-in "chart view" that shipped recently is extremely limited – just bar and donut charts on a single property.
• Formulas are limited. Notion formulas work on single rows. There's no equivalent to QUERY, FILTER, or ARRAYFORMULA – the functions that let you aggregate data across an entire table. Rollups help, but they're clunky for complex analytics.
• Performance degrades. Once a Notion database hits a few hundred entries, views start loading slower. With 500+ entries, filtering and sorting can feel laggy. A spreadsheet with 2,000 rows doesn't blink.
• Offline is unreliable. Notion's offline mode has improved, but it still catches me. If I want to add a movie while on a flight, it's a coin flip whether the database loads.
• Export is lossy. Exporting a Notion database to CSV strips relations, rollups and formulas. You get raw text. Moving your data out of Notion means losing structure.

Where Google Sheets shines

For hobby tracking specifically, Google Sheets has a few advantages that matter more than they sound:

• Real charts, built in. Line charts, bar charts, pie charts, combo charts, sparklines. You define a data range, pick a chart type and it works. No plugins, no integrations. The charts update live as your data changes.
• Powerful formulas. QUERY alone is worth the switch. It lets you write SQL-like queries against your data: "show me all books rated 8+ that I finished in 2025, grouped by genre." FILTER, ARRAYFORMULA, COUNTIFS, SUMPRODUCT – the formula library is deep.
• Scales well. I have trackers with over a thousand entries. Sorting, filtering and formula recalculation are fast. Charts render instantly.
• True offline. Google Sheets offline mode actually works. Enable it once, and you can read and edit your sheets without a connection. Changes sync when you're back online.
• Data portability. It's a spreadsheet. Download as CSV, Excel, PDF, or ODS. Copy-paste into anything. Your data is never locked in.
• Google Apps Script. This is a hidden advantage. You can write JavaScript that runs inside your sheet – auto-filling dates, showing toast notifications when a status changes, applying conditional formatting. It's a real scripting layer, not a formula hack.

Where Google Sheets falls short

Sheets has real downsides:

• Ugly by default. A blank spreadsheet looks like a blank spreadsheet. Making it look good takes effort: colors, fonts, spacing, merged cells, borders. Most people won't bother, and their tracker will look like an accounting ledger.
• No relational databases. You can't link one sheet to another the way Notion links databases. You can fake it with VLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH, but it's not native.
• No gallery or kanban view. If you want to see book covers in a grid, Sheets can't do that. It's a grid of cells, and that's what you get.
• Mobile editing is rough. The Google Sheets mobile app works, but editing cells on a phone is not a great experience. Adding a new entry on mobile is doable but not enjoyable.

Quick comparison

For hobby tracking, Sheets wins

If you're tracking books, movies, games, or music, what you actually want is analytics. You want to know: what genre do I gravitate toward? Which months am I most active? Am I on pace for my yearly goal? What's my average rating?

That's charting and formulas. That's what Sheets does well and Notion doesn't.

Notion is better for other things. Project management, knowledge bases, wikis, writing. If I needed to manage a complex project with linked tasks and notes, I'd use Notion. But for "log entries over time and analyze the data" – which is exactly what hobby tracking is – a spreadsheet is the right tool.

The template factor

The biggest Sheets weakness – looking ugly by default – goes away if you start with a good template. I build and sell SheetFlux templates, which come with a pre-built Dashboard, Insights charts, styled Library and Settings page. I didn't set up any formulas or charts myself. I just add entries and the dashboards update.

That closes the gap on Notion's visual advantage. The tracker looks clean and polished, but underneath it's still a regular Google Sheet, so you can customize anything.

Notion is a better blank canvas. Sheets is better at crunching numbers and drawing charts. For hobby tracking, I'd rather have the data tools.