Yes, you can get Excel without a subscription. Microsoft sells Office Home 2024 as a one-time purchase for one PC or Mac, with desktop Excel included. It never renews, but it also never gets the next major version, and Microsoft does not promise it has the PDF import that Microsoft 365 plans list. Check that before you buy.
Can you buy Excel without a subscription today?
You can buy Excel without a subscription as part of Office Home 2024, a one-time purchase that Microsoft sells next to its Microsoft 365 plans. You pay once, install it on one computer and keep using that version for as long as it runs.
Microsoft's comparison of Microsoft 365 products listed Office Home 2024 at $179.99 in October 2026, described as a one-time purchase for one PC or Mac. The same page lists Microsoft 365 Personal at $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month. Prices move, so open that page on the day you buy instead of trusting any figure in an article, this one included.
What "one-time" means in practice
A perpetual license, which is what a one-time purchase gives you, is a right to use one version indefinitely. Three things follow from that:
- No renewal date. Nothing bills you next year, and nothing switches off if you forget a card.
- One machine. The license covers one PC or Mac, so a desktop and a laptop need two copies.
- No upgrade path. Microsoft's comparison page says there are no upgrade options. When a later Office release arrives, you pay full price again or keep 2024.
How to tell which one you have now
If a copy of Excel is already on your computer, it may be one of these perpetual versions from an earlier purchase. Open File, then Account, and read the product name. A name with a year in it, such as 2019, 2021 or 2024, means a one-time license. A name that says Microsoft 365 means a subscription.
What one-time Excel lacks next to a Microsoft 365 plan
One-time Excel lacks the extras that come with the subscription: new features added during the year, the cloud services and the AI assistant. The spreadsheet itself, with formulas, filters, sorting and charts, is all there. For typing, cleaning and totaling a statement you already have as a CSV, the difference is small.
Microsoft lists these items under Microsoft 365 Personal on its comparison page, and they are the main things a one-time buyer goes without:
- 1 TB of cloud storage. Personal comes with a terabyte of OneDrive space. A one-time copy saves to your own disk, which is fine for a folder of statements.
- Copilot in the desktop apps. Personal lists Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote desktop apps with Microsoft Copilot. Whether Copilot's help with a PDF is worth paying for is its own question, worked through in Copilot in Excel for PDF import.
- Outlook. Personal names Outlook among its desktop apps. Office Home 2024 is listed with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
- Features that arrive later. A subscription copy picks up new Excel functions as Microsoft ships them. A 2024 copy stays the 2024 copy.
Which of these matter for bank statements?
For statement work, only one thing on that list tends to matter: the import tools. Cloud storage, Outlook and new functions are nice to have. Whether Excel can pull a PDF statement into rows decides whether you need anything else at all, and that is the subject of the next section.
Does a one-time Excel license include PDF import?
A one-time Excel license may not include the PDF import, and Microsoft does not say clearly that it does. Its table of data sources by Excel version marks the PDF connector for Microsoft 365 plans and not for Office 2016 or 2019. It has no column for 2021 or 2024, so test a 2024 copy first.
The PDF import lives under Data, Get Data, From File, From PDF. It belongs to Power Query, the import engine built into modern Excel for Windows. The part that varies by version is which connectors Power Query has. Whether Power Query is free in your Excel goes through the versions one by one.
What the version table shows
Microsoft's table of Power Query data sources in Excel versions has a row for PDF, noted as requiring .NET Framework 4.5 or later. In the Windows table, the tick marks for that row sit under the Microsoft 365 columns, both the home and business plans and Apps for Enterprise. The Office 2016 and Office 2019 columns are empty for PDF. The Mac table does not list PDF at all.
That leaves a gap for anyone holding Office 2021 or 2024, because neither year has its own column. The honest answer is to look before you pay or, if you already own it, look today.
A two-minute test on your own copy
- Open Excel and a blank workbook.
- Click the Data tab, then Get Data, then From File.
- Look for From PDF in the list.
- If it is there, choose a statement and see whether the Navigator shows a table of transactions.
If From PDF is missing, you are not stuck. The three ways to put a PDF into Excel explains what each command does and which fallback to try next.
What the import cannot do in any version
Even where From PDF exists, it reads text that is already in the file. A scanned statement is a picture of text, so the import finds nothing to read. A statement downloaded from online banking is usually real text, and that is the case where the import works best.
Excel without subscription over five years: a cost table
Over five years, one-time Excel costs less than Microsoft 365 Personal for one person who only needs the desktop apps. The subscription overtakes the one-time price in its second year. Either route can cost more than paying per statement, if your statements are the only reason you want Excel.
The table uses Microsoft's US list prices from the comparison page in October 2026, plus CheapBankConvert's early per-statement prices. The statement count is an example: one small statement a month, 12 a year.
| Route | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 5 total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office Home 2024, one-time | $179.99 | $179.99 | $179.99 | No upgrades. PDF import not confirmed by Microsoft. |
| Microsoft 365 Personal, yearly | $99.99 | $199.98 | $499.95 | PDF import listed for Microsoft 365. |
| Microsoft 365 Personal, monthly | $119.88 | $239.76 | $599.40 | Can stop in any month. |
| Excel for the web | $0 | $0 | $0 | No PDF import for files on your own computer. |
| Pay per statement, example 12 a year at $2.99 | $35.88 | $71.76 | $179.40 | Only converts statements. No spreadsheet app. |
| Pay per statement, example in bundles of 5 at $9.99 | $29.97 | $59.94 | $149.85 | 3 bundles a year cover 12 statements, with 3 left over. |
Reading the table
The one-time line is flat, which is its whole appeal. The yearly subscription passes it in year two, and by year five it costs more than twice as much. If you would pay for Microsoft 365 anyway for storage or Outlook, the PDF import is a free extra and the comparison changes.
The per-statement lines are not a like-for-like swap. They buy finished CSV or Excel files, not a spreadsheet app. You still need somewhere to open the file, and the free web version of Excel does that. Put the free app and the per-statement line together and you get $0 software plus the price of the statements you actually convert.
Where the bundle math comes from
Each bundle covers five statements, so 12 statements need three bundles, or 15 slots. You pay for three slots you may not use that year. If you convert a year at a time, that is still cheaper than 12 single purchases at $2.99.
Free Excel for the web as the no-subscription fallback
Excel for the web is the free way to use Excel with no subscription and no purchase. It runs in a browser on a free Microsoft account and handles sorting, filtering, formulas and charts. Its weakness for statement work is the import: it cannot pull a PDF from your computer into rows the way desktop Excel can.
For a statement that already arrives as a CSV, the web version is enough. Many banks offer a CSV or spreadsheet export next to the PDF, and getting that file means there is nothing to convert. Downloading bank statements for free from any bank covers where those exports usually sit in online banking.
What you give up in the browser
- No desktop PDF import. The PDF connector in the browser is tied to work or school files stored in SharePoint, according to Microsoft's version table.
- Files saved online. Workbooks live in OneDrive, not on your disk. Think about that before you upload a statement with your full account details.
- A smaller ribbon. Most everyday commands are present. Some advanced import and data model features are not.
A sensible pairing
The cheapest working setup for many people is the free web Excel plus a CSV export from the bank. Where the bank only gives a PDF, add a conversion for that one file. CheapBankConvert is getting ready to open with early prices of $2.99 for a statement up to 10 pages, and its first 2 pages preview free, so you can see the rows before you pay.
When buying Excel outright is the wrong call for statements
Buying Excel outright is the wrong call when the only job is getting rows out of a few PDF statements. You would pay $179.99 for an app that may not have the PDF import, and your statements would still need cleanup. A one-time copy earns its price when you use Excel every week for other work.
Here are the cases where a one-time purchase tends to disappoint, and what to do instead:
- You have scanned statements. No version of the import reads a scan. Buying Excel does not change that, so spend the money on a tool that handles images, or retype the few lines you need.
- You need two computers. One license covers one PC or Mac. Two copies cost more than two years of the Personal subscription.
- You expect AI help. Copilot is listed with Microsoft 365, not with Office Home 2024.
- You plan to upgrade anyway. With no upgrade path, buying 2024 now and the next release later is two full prices.
The case where it does pay
A one-time copy makes sense when you open Excel most days, you work on one computer, you want no recurring bill, and your statements are text PDFs or CSV exports. In that case, run the two-minute test first. If From PDF is there, you own a free converter for the life of that copy. If it is not, the spreadsheet is still worth having, and the PDFs need another route.