In my experience, a big reason why people reach to excel is the simple visualization you can get once the data is in there, more or less validly. This would make either Matlab, or Jupyter Notebooks the bigger competitor.
Except another reason to use Excel is the fairly low amount of programming knowledge you need. You can solve a lot of business requirements with a few point + click sums and averages, knowing how to fix parts of an equation while dragging and maybe some VLOOKUP as a stretch goal.
That is something excel does very well for many low-technical people.
Personally, I've found importing CSV and JSON files into postgres and working with views to export data tailor-made for excel visualizations to be a terrifying sweet spot of unholy and nasty power.
Except another reason to use Excel is the fairly low amount of programming knowledge you need. You can solve a lot of business requirements with a few point + click sums and averages, knowing how to fix parts of an equation while dragging and maybe some VLOOKUP as a stretch goal.
That is something excel does very well for many low-technical people.
Personally, I've found importing CSV and JSON files into postgres and working with views to export data tailor-made for excel visualizations to be a terrifying sweet spot of unholy and nasty power.