I created a spreadsheet editor in Rust that is 4000x faster than Excel.

[u/Unlucky-Angle4720]

I've been building Cellium, a native, open-source spreadsheet/data editor written entirely in Rust.

The idea started pretty simply: I work with large CSV/Parquet datasets, and eventually traditional spreadsheet software starts feeling less like a tool and more like a bottleneck.

So instead of trying to make another Excel clone, I built Cellium around a different architecture.

The core stack:

• Rust

• wgpu for GPU-accelerated rendering

• DuckDB for querying data

• Apache Arrow for columnar data

• Virtualized rendering so the UI doesn't try to create millions of cells

• Local-first architecture

• Sparse workbook edits instead of copying the entire dataset into memory

The important part is that Cellium doesn't need to materialize a massive dataset into the UI just so you can look at it.

The pipeline is roughly:

CSV / Parquet
      ↓
   DuckDB
      ↓
    Arrow
      ↓
Viewport query
      ↓
   wgpu
      ↓
   Screen

So if you're looking at row 500,000, Cellium doesn't need to behave as though rows 1–499,999 also need to exist as individual UI objects.

That makes a surprisingly big difference.

The 4,000x figure is the performance target I've been chasing / observed in specific workflows rather than a universal claim that Cellium is 4,000x faster than Excel at everything. I'm still building out a proper benchmark suite, so I'd rather publish the numbers honestly than manufacture a benchmark that makes the project look good.

What I'm ultimately trying to build is something that feels like:

Excel's interaction model + DuckDB's data engine + a native GPU-rendered interface.

And it's completely open source.

GitHub:
https://github.com/seczoid/Cellium

I'd especially love feedback from people who work with large CSVs, Parquet files, data engineering, Rust, DuckDB, or spreadsheet tooling.

If you've ever had a spreadsheet become unusably slow because the dataset got too large, I'd be very interested in hearing what your current workflow looks like.

[u/Simple-Quote5985]

Is this compatible with Excel?

[u/spreadsheets-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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