[HN Gopher] Show HN: Sheet Ninja - Google Sheets as a CRUD Back ...
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Show HN: Sheet Ninja - Google Sheets as a CRUD Back End for Vibe
Coders
Author : sxa001
Score : 66 points
Date : 2026-03-29 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sheetninja.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (sheetninja.io)
| abdusco wrote:
| The animations in the page keeps interrupting me and scrolling me
| up after I scroll past them.
| sxa001 wrote:
| Is this in the 'How it Works' section? I'll get that fixed -
| thanks for letting me know.
| ofcrpls wrote:
| Yes https://youtube.com/shorts/rQdvvGtapL4
| sxa001 wrote:
| This is really helpful thanks. I've just pushed a build to
| disable the scroll-jacking - ETA 5-10 mins!
| sxa001 wrote:
| Hi all - a friend and I have been dabbling in the entrepreneur
| space for years, but we never really pulled the trigger because
| of our corporate jobs. We suffer from the same thing that plagues
| a lot of engineers: we know how to build products, but we are
| weak at distribution and marketing.
|
| We feel that being able to build is becoming table stakes and the
| ability to actually get a product into people's hands is more
| important than ever. We built SheetNinja (https://sheetninja.io)
| to force ourselves to learn that side of the business from the
| ground up.
|
| We chose a validated market (sheets-to-api) so we could focus on
| the "how to find users" problem rather than wondering if the
| category was useful. It also fits our current "vibe coding"
| workflow i.e. when we use LLMs or Replit to spin up an idea, a
| Google Sheet is often the fastest way to handle CRUD without the
| friction of setting up a traditional database.
|
| We are looking for feedback on the tool itself and the landing
| page. We have a lot of visitors but a lower sign-up rate atm.
|
| Thanks, in advance!
|
| https://sheetninja.io
| tjohnell wrote:
| Please share the repo for the API and we will happily provide
| technical feedback.
| saadn92 wrote:
| The "we chose a validated market so we could focus on learning
| distribution" framing is really smart and honestly something I
| wish I'd done earlier. I'm building a workspace/collaboration
| tool and spent way too long on the product side before
| realizing the distribution muscle is a completely separate
| skill that doesn't develop on its own.
|
| One thing I've noticed from the sheets-as-backend pattern: the
| reason people keep reaching for spreadsheets is because the
| editing UX is instant and familiar.Any tool that wants to
| replace this for non-technical users needs to nail that "just
| click a cell and type" experience. That's the hard part
| honestly.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Good project but I wish something like this can exist for proton
| mail, I have made some puppeteer scripts which can hook up to
| proton docs.
|
| But Proton is really doing some great disservice to not having a
| public api for their docs.
|
| I can imagine it being used for anonymous comments page for
| webpages etc.
|
| I am not sure if there is something that you can do about it
| though given that the fundamental issue of this is caused by
| proton not having an api whereas I think google docs does have
| API.
|
| It's more a message to proton if anything.
| PullJosh wrote:
| Looks great! I've definitely wanted this exact thing before. I
| will consider reaching for this next time I need to throw
| together a quick app.
| mememememememo wrote:
| Oh man fix the site. If I scroll down it auto scrolls up after 2
| seconds. And other bugs.
| sxa001 wrote:
| Sorry about that - I've pushed a fix to stop it from auto-
| scrolling which should be propagating through soon. Thank you
| for flagging this
| mememememememo wrote:
| Thanks! No need to be sorry :)
| tyleo wrote:
| This site is pretty broken. The project seems cool but I'd
| recommend a more static landing page. I bounced very quickly.
| Didn't even make it to the bottom with all the distracting
| animations.
| snoopen wrote:
| I'm not sure I see why this needs to be a paid service. Unless I
| understand incorrectly, you can get the same result for free,
| self contained, with freely available code like this:
| https://gist.github.com/richardblondet/ce87a397ef669d4d25dd2...
| robotswantdata wrote:
| Don't really get the purpose for this apart from throw away
| projects.
|
| For vibe coders is it really "hours" setting up a database these
| days? GCP cloud sql + drizzle ORM is minutes and actually scales
| unlike a spreadsheet, heck Claude can even write you a deployment
| script and run it over GCP CLI.
| misiek08 wrote:
| Cloud SQL costs gazillions, sheet is free (other than selling
| your data)
| codybontecou wrote:
| Most are lucky to get a few sign ups.
| robotswantdata wrote:
| Cloud sql lowest tier is pennies a day, this ninja platform
| is also not free.
|
| A spreadsheet is a misclick away from corruption, why not
| spend another prompt on getting Claude to configure a db?
| kevcampb wrote:
| Which works out at $100 USD / year. You might think that's
| trivial, but when you start provisioning multiple
| environments over multiple projects it starts to add up.
|
| It's a shame that Google haven't managed to come up with a
| scale to zero option or serverless alternative that's
| compatible.
| rvz wrote:
| It is trivial to set up a database on GCP given that you
| know what you are doing and I would pay Google for that
| stability and support for setting up multi-tenancy and
| region.
|
| Using Google spreadsheets as a backend will just cause
| them to charge everyone later.
|
| Sheet Ninja isn't free. Even on their side, "free" does
| not mean what you think it means.
| robotswantdata wrote:
| setup a DB project , use same cloud sql instance for all
| DBs. Did that for years on non prod or experimental
| projects. $100 is a bargain for what you get in terms of
| resiliency
| Yokohiii wrote:
| Sheet Ninja is 108 USD / year and has tiny capacities for
| every metric. SQLite is free and would stomp this in
| every aspect on low budget hosting. Even a tiny API that
| stores CSV would be magnitudes more efficient.
|
| But what would scare me the most, is that google can
| easily shut this thing down.
| n_e wrote:
| > Cloud sql lowest tier is pennies a day
|
| Unless things have improved it's also hideously slow, like
| trivial queries on a small table taking tens of
| milliseconds. Though I guess that if the alternative is
| google sheets that's not really a concern.
| gruez wrote:
| >sheet is free (other than selling your data)
|
| Except the sheets-to-api SaaS charges $9/month if you want
| more than 250 requests.
| bercini wrote:
| You can fire up a burstable postgres for about $20/mo
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Cloud SQL costs gazillions,
|
| WTF is "Cloud SQL"?
|
| I have a postgresql server running on a $5/m VPS that I add
| DBs to as and when I explore some new idea.
| robotswantdata wrote:
| Google have you covered:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8ig2BtLAY
| Zetaphor wrote:
| SQLite is enough for 98% of all of these use cases, and 100% of
| the ones this would appeal to
| faangguyindia wrote:
| Don't do this guy, cloudsql costs a lot.
| patate007 wrote:
| I think it can be useful if you want to use an existing Google
| Sheet, or if your users want to modify the database directly in
| Google Sheets, even though it seems pretty risky.
| rsafaya wrote:
| Really good project for a quick data back end.
|
| One feature suggestion: webhook support for row changes:
|
| If my Sheet updates (say, a new waitlist signup), I'd want to
| trigger for e.g. a Slack notification. Supabase has something
| similar with their database webhooks. I use that extensively for
| kicking off signup workflows.
| snoopen wrote:
| You can do this now directly in the Google environment. Should
| be trivial to vibe code Google Apps Script to hit a Slack
| endpoint. You'd probably use an 'on edit' trigger to run the
| code.
| sxa001 wrote:
| That's a great suggestion, thank you
|
| For your signup workflows, how sensitive would you be to
| latency? Would a 30 to 60 second delay be a dealbreaker, or are
| you looking for something that hits Slack the instant the row
| is created?
|
| (The challenge with Google Sheets is we'd have to poll for
| changes)
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Do vibe coders need an api for an api? Sounds like something
| solvable with a skill
| igor_mart wrote:
| Just impossible to read the landing page on mobile due to endless
| carousel sliding which constantly returns you to the top of the
| page
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I didn't have any "top of page" navigations that I didn't
| control going on.
| odest wrote:
| I really like the idea of using Google Sheets for quick
| prototyping and maybe "vibe coding" without the friction of
| setting up a traditional DB.
|
| I haven't noticed a scrolling issues, btw
| lpcvoid wrote:
| The world needs less vibe coded slop, not more
| evanbabaallos wrote:
| Is this meant to replace databases?
| _joel wrote:
| "Ship now, pay later" you're not wrong.
| 0xbrad wrote:
| Awesome!
| curbits wrote:
| I have done this for my own projects for years it's great for
| projects that are only for me and gives me a very good db editor
| also. Cool project though the only risk I see is that if the
| target audience are vibe coders they will you known just vibe
| code an integration
| sxa001 wrote:
| Thank you! The idea of our target audience just vibe coding
| this themselves definitely gave us pause for thought while we
| were building it :)
|
| We're thinking of playing around with the pricing right now to
| make sure it is cheaper to just use this than to spend the time
| and tokens recreating the logic. We will see how it plays out.
| pduggishetti wrote:
| SQLite, SQLite + drizzle with WAL mode, push it to a VPS, do not
| waste your time on anything else :)
|
| Thank me when things become super easy!
|
| When things scale, SQLite will still be fine, will fit 99% of the
| vibe coders needs!
|
| When they don't then migrate to what ever!
| mettamage wrote:
| This requires technical skill
| threatofrain wrote:
| If Claude can do it reasonably well then there's another tier
| of technical skill that can reach.
| rvz wrote:
| > When things scale, SQLite will still be fine, will fit 99% of
| the vibe coders needs!
|
| No it won't. SQLite is a poor choice at handling this, period.
| With all those hacks it still doesn't make any sense over
| something like PostgresSQL which is designed for that use case.
|
| Yet another reason why I dismiss this nonsense of vibe coding.
| pduggishetti wrote:
| I accept what you say, my point is for 99% of vibe coded and
| vibe coders stuff you have no reason to spin up anything more
| than sqlite, if you grow migrate to postgres, you will have
| drizzle help you!
|
| A single vps like 1-2 GB ram and 2 CPU can suffice 100s of
| your projects
|
| SQLite can handle 100s of users easyily
|
| And 99% of vibe coded projects won't grow further than 100s
| of concurrent users
| Raed667 wrote:
| I put Google Sheets as a backend (in production) when i wanted a
| select non technical people to be able to see and modify the data
| without the cost of building a backend.
|
| I really wish auth was easier to setup for services though, i see
| no reason google can't provide this out of the box
| riffraff wrote:
| You can auth with Google auth after you configure an app, what
| are you thinking of that would be simpler?
| Raed667 wrote:
| I meant to authenticate a service (that is not running on
| GCP) to access the sheet, it requires a service account and
| felt more convoluted than what it needs to be
| afferi300rina wrote:
| Completely agree. Managing service account JSON keys and
| configuring IAM roles just to access a single sheet feels
| like a huge overhead for simple projects.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| If this site does not run on top of a google sheet then don't
| believe it.
| xnx wrote:
| A pay option like this definitely seems worse than the Firebase
| backend that AI Studio would automatically use.
| Leftium wrote:
| I made a similar project: https://veneer.leftium.com
|
| You can publish any publicly readable sheet/form (append rows
| with publicly available form):
|
| - sample sheet:
| https://veneer.leftium.com/s.1RoVLit_cAJPZBeFYzSwHc7vADV_fYL...
|
| - sample form: https://veneer.leftium.com/g.chwbD7sLmAoLe65Z8
| joshstrange wrote:
| I like this idea, I wrote a tiny CRM-like thing for my mom a
| month or so ago (upgrade from a google sheet that I had
| previously upgraded from an Apple Note) and it uses Sheets as
| it's backend. She can always go back to the Sheet and lose
| nothing but the web interface she uses it tailored to exactly
| what she needs. I couldn't be happier with it and she loves it.
|
| I'll have to remember this for my next little one-off tool.
| kent8192 wrote:
| I think it can be one option to achieve a tiny goal. Some
| companies often think that using AWS or GCP is too much of a
| stretch for a minimum target. So, it can be a good way to meet
| their request.
| pezo1919 wrote:
| Afaik Google Sheets comes with REST API endpoints by default.
|
| How is this different?
|
| Which scenarios do and which DO NOT require Sheet Ninja?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Did this 9 years ago :o, cached it though.
| zephyrwhimsy wrote:
| Version-controllable, plaintext knowledge bases have a durability
| advantage that no SaaS tool can match. Your notes will outlive
| any company.
| mamday1 wrote:
| You do not need to go through these guys Google provides access
| to the URL to use the sheet as a database and also allows you to
| deploy Javascript and even host the site with AppScript (example
| https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbzYt_aXBdQlnMM7idlVD... )
| TheTaytay wrote:
| The +1 button doesn't work?
| sroerick wrote:
| This is a great project, very cool, but it is actually insane to
| me that CRUD is so apparently hard that Google Sheets is the best
| solution
| ugh123 wrote:
| What's old is new again: Filemaker Pro
| Andrex wrote:
| The attractiveness of a spreadsheet comes in the display and
| the charts, etc.
|
| For a serious database doing actual transactions, I'm not sure
| about the utility.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Umm, does Google sheets let you fetch rows in O(log(n)) time or
| aggregate numbers?
| Andrew_McCarron wrote:
| Nice execution on the Google Sheets as backend angle -- it's a
| much lower friction onboarding story than "set up a database."
| How are you handling concurrent writes when multiple users edit
| the sheet at the same time?
| sxa001 wrote:
| Thanks and great question - appends are atomic via Google's
| Sheet API, but updates/deletes are currently positional based
| on row ID. It's 'last-write-wins' for now if there are multiple
| concurrent updates.
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(page generated 2026-03-29 23:01 UTC)