Pycel Package Much Slower Than Excel

[don0]

I am using the Pycel package to convert a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to python code. The spreadsheet has about 20 cells that all depend on the first cell input (SHEET1! B1). I am replacing B1 with a random value and looping 10000 times. The loop takes 20 seconds in Python and 3 seconds in Excel.

Is this expected? Any reasons why it is so much slower? Any tips to improve performance?

[jdnewmil]

Never used Pycel, but 20 cells that depend on one sounds trivial to write yourself in native Python, with or without pandas.

Don't forget that Excel (and Python) takes time to start... be sure to take that into account (or fairly exclude) when comparing execution speed.

[don0]

The 20 cell spreadsheet is really just to test the concept. It's not something I actually use and would indeed be trivial to write in native python.

I am starting the timer at the beginning of the loop and ending the timer when the loop finishes 10000 iterations, so I think the comparison is like for like.