Flowshot
Flowshot is a Google Sheets add-on that brings AI into the spreadsheet through a sidebar and four custom formulas, handling autocomplete, free-form prompts, formula writing and image generation, with a permanent free tier and no setup required.
What is Flowshot?
Flowshot is a Google Sheets add-on published by Flowshot Ltd, a London company, and it exists in two quite different shapes under one name.
The first is the spreadsheet product. Once installed, it adds a sidebar and four custom formulas to any sheet. =COMPLETE fills a range by inferring the pattern from examples you supply, =AI runs a free-form instruction or question inside a cell, =FORMULA converts a plain-English description into the formula that does the job, and =IMAGINE generates an image from a prompt. They behave like native functions and work with absolute references and named ranges, so results can be dragged, nested and referenced normally. Beginners are meant to stay in the sidebar; the formulas are the power-user route.
Underneath, Flowshot says it routes each request to whichever model suits the task, describing a mix of OpenAI's GPT-3 and its own stack. The claim is not consistent across the site: the older product page states flatly that GPT-3 is not used. Better documented is the engineering wrapped around the models. Google Sheets gives custom functions a very short timeout, so Flowshot adds rate limiting, automatic retries, batching and a remote cache, with batching alone said to yield seventy per cent more usable characters each month. A Save button freezes formulas into plain values so a page refresh does not burn quota twice.
The second shape is the enterprise business the founders started with: bespoke NLP and NLG models trained on a customer's own historical data and delivered through an API that plugs into a database or CMS. Coupon sites, price-comparison aggregators and e-commerce catalogues are the stated targets, with a case study moving content costs from sixty thousand dollars to six.
One caveat is unavoidable. The site has not changed since February 2023, several pages return empty or parked responses, and the Google Workspace Marketplace listing it points to no longer answers, which is the only installation route it describes.
What it does
- Complete a whole range of cells from a handful of examples
- Run any instruction or question directly inside a cell
- Turn a plain-English description into a working Sheets formula
- Generate images from a text prompt without leaving the spreadsheet
- Classify, categorise, extract and label unstructured or scraped data
- Produce product titles, descriptions and SEO metadata in a brand voice
- Train a custom AI model on historical brand data and call it through an API
When to use Flowshot / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Flowshot is the right fit.
When to use Flowshot
- Google Sheets power users who would rather have AI in the cell next to their data than in a separate chat window
- Coupon and deal site operators, whose content is data-rich, high-volume and time-sensitive
- E-commerce and marketplace teams producing product titles, descriptions and SEO metadata at scale
- Analysts classifying unstructured or scraped text: sentiment, topic labels, field extraction
- Small marketing and content teams that need volume without hiring an agency
When not to use Flowshot
- Anyone outside the Google ecosystem: there is no Excel, Airtable or Notion version, and a Google account is compulsory
- Mobile and desktop users, since Flowshot exists only as a spreadsheet add-on with no app of any kind
- Organisations with formal vendor-security requirements, as no DPA, certification or subprocessor list is published
- Teams that must be able to keep their data out of model training, which the site never addresses
- Buyers who need to install today: every Google Workspace Marketplace link the site publishes now returns an error
How to use Flowshot
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Check you are signed in with your browser's primary Google account, since mismatched accounts are the documented cause of most failures
- Open the Google Workspace Marketplace listing and install the add-on, bearing in mind that this listing no longer responded when this entry was reviewed
- Or install from the spreadsheet itself through Extensions, then Add-ons, then Get add-ons, a route the documentation advises against
- Open any spreadsheet and go to Extensions, then Flowshot, then Open sidebar
- Start in the sidebar and pick one of the four modes: Autocomplete, Use AI anywhere, Generate formulas or Generate images
- Test the formula route by typing =AI("Write me a funny joke") into a cell
- For autocomplete, fill a few example rows first, then let =COMPLETE infer the rest of the range
- Pass FALSE as a second argument when you want to bypass the remote cache and force a fresh generation
- Click Save in the sidebar to turn formulas into plain values so refreshes stop consuming quota
- Ask for the free onboarding session, or book a strategy call if you need a custom model and API access
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Lives inside a tool most people already open every day, with no setup and no API key to manage
- Genuinely generous permanent free plan: 100,000 characters a month with no payment card
- All four formulas stay unlimited, free plan included, so the free tier is a real product rather than a demo
- Two entry points for two audiences: a sidebar for beginners, formulas for power users
- =FORMULA answers a real everyday problem, finding the right Sheets formula without knowing it exists
- Documented engineering against actual Sheets limitations, with batching claimed to stretch quota by seventy per cent
- Transparent publisher: registered company, company number, postal address and a named representative in the imprint
Cons
- The Google Workspace Marketplace listing, the only installation route the site describes, no longer responds
- The site has been frozen since February 2023, with an expired discount still on screen and a relaunch banner never removed
- Broken pages: contact and waitlist return an empty body, and the documentation index resolves to a parking page
- Two contradictory pricing tables coexist, one counting quota in characters and the other in words
- The site gives opposite answers on whether GPT-3 is used, depending on which page you read
- No DPA, no certification, no subprocessor list and no documented way to opt out of model training
- Total dependence on Google, including a known and unresolved bug when several Google accounts are signed in
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is offered at no cost, covering 100,000 characters per month with unlimited use of every formula and no payment card required. The cheapest paid entry point is Flowshot Pro at USD 9.00 per month billed monthly, or the equivalent of USD 7.50 per month on the annual plan, which grants two months free. Buyers should note that an older product page on the same site still advertises a different and outdated table, measured in generated words rather than characters.
- USD 0 - 100
- 000 characters per month
- unlimited formulas
- free onboarding
- no payment card
- USD 9 per month
- or USD 7.50 per month billed annually - 1
- 000
- 000 characters per month
- USD 29 per month
- or USD 24.17 per month billed annually - 3
- 500
- 000 characters per month
- USD 59 per month
- or USD 49.17 per month billed annually - 7
- 500
- 000 characters per month
- USD 129 per month
- or USD 107.50 per month billed annually - 18
- 000
- 000 characters per month
- Every paid tier adds unlimited formulas
- free onboarding
- no contract
- a say in the roadmap and priority chat and email support
- custom pricing - bespoke AI model with a free consultation
- delivered in one to four weeks
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Flowshot handles your data.
GDPR overview
Flowshot Ltd claims compliance with the United Kingdom GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, not with the European regulation, and names the Information Commissioner's Office as the supervisory authority. The policy sets out its legal bases (consent, contractual obligation, legal compliance, legitimate interest) and enumerates the full set of rights: information, access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and portability. Requests go by email to the company or by post to its London address, free of charge unless manifestly unfounded, with identity verification possible. Two gaps are explicit. No data protection officer has been appointed, which the company states openly, and no Article 27 representative is designated for the European Union. California residents are handled under a separate provision. The policy is dated 10 February 2023 and has not been revised since.
Who owns the data?
Flowshot Ltd names itself your data controller and states plainly that it has appointed no data protection officer, considering itself under no obligation to. It lists what it collects: identity, contact, marketing preferences, billing, financial and transactional records, and no special categories. Access is limited to a small number of employees bound by confidentiality. The company reserves the right to share personal data with subcontractors and affiliates under confidentiality obligations, with interested parties during a change of control or acquisition, and with a buyer in a sale or transfer, after which the acquirer's own privacy policy may govern further use. Nothing published addresses ownership of the AI output itself.
Reuse rights
Neither the terms nor the privacy policy restricts what you do with the material you produce through Flowshot. No licence is claimed over the generated output, no intellectual-property clause covers it, and no permission step is described, so reuse needs no request. On the enterprise side the vendor goes further: custom models are built separately for each customer, data is never shared between customers, and you are explicitly invited to regenerate the same content several times in order to publish across white-label sites or to run A/B tests. Your own account data can be modified or deleted by emailing the company, and deleting the account is said to erase everything stored. One caveat is worth stating: the documents are silent on output ownership rather than granting it. In practice that silence works in the user's favour, but it is not the same as a written grant, and an enterprise buyer should get the point settled in the contract.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Flowshot Ltd names two hosting providers in its terms: Vultr and Cloudflare. DNS resolution confirms the domain sits behind Cloudflare's anycast network, with the exit node geolocated in the United States. The privacy policy is explicit that information may be stored and processed in the United States, or in other jurisdictions outside it where the company has facilities, and that using the service constitutes consent to that transfer. No choice of hosting region is offered and no data-residency option exists. Beyond those two supplier names, the company publishes no subprocessor list, offers no data processing agreement and mentions no security certification: neither SOC 2 nor ISO 27001 appears anywhere on the site. For a British controller claiming UK GDPR compliance, that combination leaves the mechanism for international transfers entirely undescribed. Buyers with a data-residency requirement will find nothing here to work with.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Flowshot.
- Availability comes first: the only distribution channel the site names no longer responds, so anything built on Flowshot could stop without notice
- Spreadsheet lock-in is real, because formulas that stop resolving leave errors scattered through live documents, which is exactly why the Save button exists
- Your data leaves your jurisdiction: the privacy policy permits storage and processing in the United States, and no data-residency option is offered
- There is no documented way to exclude your data from model training, and no data processing agreement through which to negotiate one
- Compliance is claimed against the UK GDPR alone, with no Article 27 representative for the European Union
- Trusting output without checking it is the everyday risk: cells fill silently, and a wrong classification in row 400 looks exactly like a right one
- Leaning on =FORMULA is convenient but corrosive, since you end up automating spreadsheet logic you never learn to read
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low by design. Installation is a few clicks from the Marketplace, with no configuration, no API key and nothing to host. The sidebar removes even the need to know a formula, and free onboarding is offered on every plan. The one prerequisite is a Google account, which must be your browser's default: multiple signed-in Google accounts cause most reported failures, and three workarounds are documented. The enterprise API is a different matter and needs developer time, though the vendor offers to handle integration free of charge. The real obstacle today is that the Marketplace listing no longer responds.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Flowshot
Fundraising
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Flowshot.
Frequently asked questions
How is Flowshot different from ChatGPT?
Which AI models does Flowshot use?
How do I install Flowshot?
Is there a free plan?
What does the cheapest paid plan cost?
What counts against the monthly quota?
Is there an API?
Who is behind Flowshot, and where?
Will the generated content be unique?
Can I keep my data out of model training?
Should you pick Flowshot?
Flowshot got the idea right. Putting AI where people already work, rather than in yet another tab, is the correct instinct for a spreadsheet audience, and the execution shows care: four formulas that behave like native ones, a sidebar for people who never want to see a formula, and a layer of rate limiting, retries, batching and caching built specifically around the way Google Sheets treats custom functions. The free plan is genuinely generous at 100,000 characters a month with no card, the paid tiers are legible, and the publisher is unusually transparent, with a registered British company, its number, its address and a named representative in the imprint.
What is harder to overlook is the state of the thing. The site has not moved since February 2023. A discount code that expired on 10 March is still on screen, next to a banner promising a relaunch at the end of January. The contact and waitlist pages return an empty body. The documentation index resolves to a parking page. Two pricing tables contradict each other, one counting characters and the other words, and the site answers its own question about GPT-3 in two opposite ways.
The decisive point is narrower. Flowshot is distributed exclusively through the Google Workspace Marketplace, and every listing address the site publishes now returns an error, while a control listing loads normally. Flowshot Ltd remains active at Companies House and filed accounts through September 2025, so the company has not vanished. The product, however, cannot be shown to work.
Treat this entry as a historical record unless you can confirm the add-on still installs. The design deserved better than this, but nothing observed today supports recommending it for new use.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.