Every European HR software tool reviewed
Eindhoven, Netherlands
Per employee per month, integrations and security included: Flow €6.50, Momentum €9, Compound on request. Per-head discount from 100 employees and for multi-year contracts (checked on treams.com, 2 November 2026).
No free trial; demo and a test environment set up for your company
Best for: Managers and HR teams that want performance, engagement and talent review in one tool
Treams, from Eindhoven, is performance management software rather than a full HR suite. It has no payroll, absence or recruitment modules on the pages we read. Instead it covers goals and OKRs, review and 1:1 conversations, 360 feedback, engagement surveys with eNPS, growth paths, talent review on a 9-grid, a skill matrix and succession planning, and connects to HR and payroll systems such as AFAS, Visma, Youforce, Nmbrs, Loket.nl, SD Worx and HoorayHR.
AI is part of every package: preparation and summaries of one-to-ones, recorded and summarised conversations on Momentum, and AI suggestions per employee and for talent analysis on Compound. The vendor says the AI runs in a European AWS region, is not trained on customer data and only makes suggestions. Treams B.V. (KvK 67017738) states ISO 27001 certification, hosting on AWS in Ireland and sub-processors within the EEA.
Pricing is per employee per month with integrations and security included: Flow is €6.50, Momentum €9 and Compound on request, with a volume discount from 100 employees. Testing happens through a demo and a test environment, not a free trial. Compared with the all-in-one suites on this page it is narrower, and it suits companies that already run an HR system and want a dedicated performance layer on top.
The vendor says more than 200 organisations use Treams and quotes usage per customer: Bufab recorded 947 conversations and set 1,301 goals, iPS set 605 goals, and Schouten Zekerheid completed 95.9% of its goals on time.
It says go-live needs no long implementation project, that HR sees results within the same quarter, and that managers run 1:1s, feedback and goals in the rhythm of the work week.
The vendor also states that the platform is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR-proof, that customer data is not exported to external tools such as ChatGPT, that its AI removes administrative tasks and helps set sharper, measurable goals, and that onboarding and support after go-live are personal.
What Treams does well
- Goals, 1:1s, 360 feedback, engagement and 9-grid talent review in one platform
- Per-employee prices published, with integrations and security included
- AI in every plan that removes administrative tasks and helps set measurable goals, stated not to be trained on customer data
- ISO 27001 and EU hosting on AWS in Ireland, with customer data not exported to external tools such as ChatGPT
- Integrations with AFAS, Visma, Youforce, Nmbrs, SD Worx and others
Where Treams falls short
- Performance, engagement and talent only, no payroll, absence or recruitment
- No free trial, a demo and test environment instead
- Compound pricing on request
- Integration list centres on Dutch HR and payroll systems
Standout feature. A performance layer that publishes per-employee prices and names its HR and payroll integrations, from a Dutch company.
Munich, Germany
Founded 2015
From about €2.88/employee/month
Demo on request
Best for: European SMBs from 10 to 2,000 employees wanting one HR system
Personio is the most complete all-in-one HR platform for European SMBs, and the breadth is genuine rather than a feature list. Recruitment with applicant tracking, digital personnel files replacing the filing cabinet, absence management, time tracking, payroll preparation and performance management all live in one system — so an employee's contract change, holiday request and review history are one record rather than four spreadsheets that disagree.
Personio SE & Co. KG is based in Munich and processes on EU infrastructure in AWS Frankfurt, which for personnel data — sickness absence records are health data and special category under the GDPR — means intra-EEA processing with no transfer analysis.
Pricing starts at about €2.88 per employee per month, the lowest per-employee figure in this category for a full platform, aimed at organisations from 10 to 2,000 people. Integrations connect it to payroll providers and the wider business stack.
The considerations are the usual all-in-one ones: individual modules are less deep than a dedicated specialist, payroll is preparation rather than execution so a provider or accountant is still required, and multi-country operation is where the all-in-one starts needing help.
What Personio does well
- Recruitment, personnel files, absence, time tracking and payroll prep in one system
- From about €2.88/employee/month, the lowest full-platform price here
- EU processing on AWS Frankfurt
- Built for 10 to 2,000 employees, the actual European SMB range
- Integrations with national payroll providers
Where Personio falls short
- Payroll is preparation, not execution — a provider is still needed
- Individual modules less deep than dedicated specialists
- Multi-country operation strains the all-in-one model
- Pricing scales with headcount
Standout feature. One record per employee: Personio is the platform where a contract change, a holiday request and a review history live in the same file rather than in four systems.
Hamburg, Germany
Founded 2000
Quoted on request
Demo available; no free plan or trial period stated
Best for: Mid-sized and large employers that want HR management, recruiting and talent management in one suite, in the cloud or on-premises
Rexx Systems GmbH, founded in 2000 and headquartered in Hamburg with further offices in Vienna and Zurich, sells a German HR software suite for HR management, recruiting and talent management.
HR management covers the personnel file, time tracking, travel expenses and whistleblowing; recruiting brings an applicant tracking system with multiposting; talent management covers appraisals, skill management, succession planning and learning management. Onboarding is one function inside that suite rather than the product itself. The vendor states it serves more than 3,000 customers in over 30 countries and designs the product for 50 to 50,000 employees.
The differentiator is deployment flexibility: Rexx Systems runs as cloud software, which the vendor says sits in ISO-certified data centres in Germany and Switzerland, and it can also be installed on-premises.
That is uncommon among HR suites and matters for organisations, often in regulated industries or the public sector, whose policies exclude cloud hosting for employee data. Because HR management, recruiting and talent management share one suite, a hire can flow from the applicant record into the personnel file without a separate integration. The vendor holds ISO 27001:2022 certification.
No price list is published, so cost is quoted on request through a demo and a sales conversation. That makes Rexx Systems harder to evaluate quickly against tools that publish real numbers, even though its scope is much broader than a single-purpose product. It is a suite sold to employers who want HR and recruiting together: a team with one narrow problem may be better served by a focused tool.
What Rexx Systems does well
- HR management, recruiting and talent management in one suite and one data model
- Cloud or fully on-premises deployment, uncommon among HR suites
- ISO 27001:2022 certification stated by the vendor, with data centres in Germany and Switzerland
- Established vendor, founded in 2000, with a stated 3,000+ customers across 30+ countries
- Offices in Hamburg, Vienna and Zurich give it a genuine DACH-region presence
Where Rexx Systems falls short
- No published pricing, every quote requires a sales conversation
- No finance, procurement or planning layer, so it covers the people side only
- A suite for employers who want HR and recruiting together, less suited to one narrow problem
- Security documents such as the penetration test report are available on request only
Standout feature. One suite for HR management, recruiting and talent management that can run in the cloud or on your own servers.
Barcelona, Spain
Founded 2016
Free tier / from about €4.50/employee/month
Free tier
Best for: SMBs wanting comprehensive HR with a free tier to start
Factorial is the best-value entry into full HR software, and the free tier is what makes it that. A small company can run time tracking, absence management and a personnel database without a purchase decision, then move to paid plans from about €4.50 per employee per month when it needs payroll, recruitment or performance. Very little in this category can be evaluated with real employee data before committing.
Factorial HR operates from Barcelona, and its Spanish origin shows in the strongest part of the product: time tracking and attendance built as a compliance feature rather than a convenience.
Spain implements the European working-time recording requirement stringently, and an objective, tamper-evident daily record is a legal obligation rather than a management preference — including for salaried staff. Beyond that, Factorial goes further into payroll and compensation than most all-in-ones, and adds document management with e-signatures, recruitment and applicant tracking, performance management and employee development, an API and a solid mobile experience. Processing is in the EU. As with any all-in-one, individual modules are shallower than a specialist tool.
What Factorial does well
- Free tier lets you evaluate with real employee data
- From about €4.50/employee/month for paid plans
- Time tracking built for European working-time compliance
- Goes further into payroll and compensation than most all-in-ones
- Document management with e-signatures, plus a good mobile app
Where Factorial falls short
- Individual modules shallower than dedicated specialists
- Free tier is limited enough that most will need paid quickly
- Strongest fit is Spanish and southern European markets
- Performance management lighter than Treams or Elevo
Standout feature. A free tier on real HR: Factorial is the only all-in-one here you can run with actual employee records before spending anything.
Berlin, Germany
Founded 2017
Contact for pricing
Demo on request
Best for: SMBs wanting a user-friendly European HR platform
Kenjo is an all-in-one HR platform built by Spanish founders in Berlin, and that combination shapes the product: German rigour on working-time compliance and documentation, with a usability sensibility that makes it approachable for companies without an HR department. Time tracking and working-time compliance, absence and leave management, recruitment and applicant tracking, onboarding workflows, performance management and feedback, payroll preparation, and an employee database with document management cover the standard SMB requirement.
Onboarding workflows are the part worth noting: getting a new employee equipped, trained and compliant is where small companies improvise most, and encoding it as a repeatable workflow removes a recurring failure.
Kenjo GmbH is based in Berlin with EU processing and GDPR compliance by establishment. Pricing is quoted rather than published, which makes comparison against Personio and Factorial harder than it should be at this size of purchase. As with the other all-in-ones, payroll is preparation rather than execution and individual modules are less deep than a dedicated specialist.
What Kenjo does well
- All-in-one covering time, absence, recruitment, onboarding and performance
- Onboarding workflows as a first-class feature
- Working-time compliance built in
- German company with EU processing
- Approachable for companies without a dedicated HR team
Where Kenjo falls short
- Pricing quoted rather than published
- Payroll is preparation, not execution
- Modules less deep than specialists
- Smaller than Personio, with a correspondingly smaller ecosystem
Standout feature. Onboarding as a workflow: Kenjo is the platform that turns the improvised first week into something repeatable, which is where small companies lose the most time.
Paris, France
Founded 2015
Per-employee subscription, quoted on request
Demo on request
Best for: SMEs that want to run payroll themselves instead of sending it out
PayFit does the thing the rest of this category carefully stops short of: it runs payroll rather than preparing data for someone else to run. Most HR platforms produce an export that goes to an accountant or a bureau, which means the monthly cycle still depends on an external party, their deadlines and their error rate.
Doing it properly is hard precisely because payroll is national. Contribution rates, leave entitlements, notice rules and the format the tax authority expects all differ per country and change every year, and a platform that gets one of them wrong creates a problem measured in employee trust rather than in software bugs. PayFit maintains that per country, which is why it operates market by market rather than shipping one generic product.
Around the payroll engine sits the HR layer — contracts, absence, expenses, onboarding — so the employment record and the payslip come from the same data instead of two systems that disagree by the third month.
PayFit operates from Paris with EU processing under GDPR, which for payroll data is the strongest possible argument, since it is the most sensitive record an employer holds. Pricing is per employee and quoted rather than published, and country coverage is the constraint: it is excellent where it operates and unavailable where it does not.
What PayFit does well
- Runs payroll rather than preparing it for a bureau
- Country-specific compliance maintained per market
- HR record and payslip come from the same data
- French company, EU processing under GDPR
- Removes dependency on an external payroll provider
Where PayFit falls short
- Only available in the countries it supports
- Pricing quoted rather than published
- Aimed at SMEs rather than large enterprises
- Migration mid-tax-year needs planning
Standout feature. It actually runs the payroll — no export, no bureau, and no waiting on someone else's deadline.
Paris, France
Founded 2002
Per module, per employee/month excl. VAT (indicative, 100+ employees): Core HR €3.21, Absences €3.11, Timesheets €3.00, Performance €3.97, Engagement €3.16; no minimum term
Demo on request
Best for: Companies that want their HR data on European-owned infrastructure
Lucca is the clearest answer in this category to the question the rest of it answers vaguely: whose machines is the personnel file actually on?
Lucca SAS runs on OVHcloud in France and Germany, with encrypted backups at Scaleway in France and the Netherlands — a French company, French and German data centres, and two French infrastructure providers, rather than a European vendor renting capacity from an American hyperscaler. For a personnel file, which holds sickness absence and therefore health data, that removes the layer of transfer analysis that an EU region on a US cloud still leaves in place.
The product is sold module by module rather than as a suite, and the prices are published: for organisations of 100 or more employees Lucca gives indicative figures of €3.21 per employee per month for Core HR, €3.11 for Absences, €3.00 for Timesheets, €3.97 for Performance and €3.16 for Engagement, excluding VAT and with no minimum term.
That is unusually transparent for a platform of this size — Kenjo and PayFit both quote on request — but it also means the bill is the sum of what you switch on, and four modules at once puts Lucca well above the per-employee headline of a bundled all-in-one.
Lucca has held ISO 27001 since July 2022, the only independent security audit named by any of the long-established platforms here.
The gaps are commercial rather than technical: there is no free trial, only a demo on request, so the product cannot be evaluated with real employee data the way Factorial or Eurécia allow.
The published prices are indications for 100-plus headcounts, so a company of thirty is negotiating rather than reading. And Swiss customers are the exception to the infrastructure story — they are hosted on Microsoft Azure in Switzerland with backups on Google Cloud in Zurich, which is the American cloud the French setup avoids. Founded in 2002, it is also the oldest company in this category by more than a decade.
What Lucca does well
- Hosted on OVHcloud in France and Germany, with backups at Scaleway — European infrastructure end to end
- ISO 27001 since July 2022, an independent audit rather than a GDPR statement
- Per-module prices published, from €3.00 per employee per month for Timesheets
- No minimum term, and modules can be bought one at a time
- Paris company trading since 2002, the longest track record here
Where Lucca falls short
- No free trial — demo on request only
- Published prices are indications for 100+ employees; smaller companies negotiate
- Running four or five modules costs more per employee than a bundled all-in-one
- Swiss customers sit on Microsoft Azure with Google Cloud backups, not on OVHcloud
Standout feature. French company, French and German hardware: Lucca is the only platform here whose data and backups both sit with European infrastructure providers rather than on a US hyperscaler's EU region.
Valencia, Spain
Essential €4.75 / Connect €5.50 / Growth €6.25 / Scale €8.00 per employee/month excl. VAT (Spanish price page); minimum 15 employees; custom plan on request
14-day free trial, no commitment
Best for: Spanish and southern European SMBs that need working-time records first
Sesame HR is built outward from the time clock. Shift planning and working-time recording are the centre of the product, with leave and absence and a performance module around them — which reflects where it comes from, since Spain implements the European requirement for an objective daily record of hours more stringently than most member states and a Valencian vendor cannot treat it as an optional module.
Companies whose first HR problem is proving who worked when, rather than storing contracts, will find the product organised the way they think.
Sesame Labs, S.L. publishes its prices on the Spanish site: Essential at €4.75, Connect at €5.50, Growth at €6.25 and Scale at €8.00 per employee per month excluding VAT, with a custom plan on request.
There is a 14-day free trial with no commitment, so the product can be tested on real staff before anything is signed. Two caveats belong with those figures. The Spanish price page also shows a second, higher set of numbers without saying plainly which applies to annual and which to monthly billing, so the quote is worth confirming in writing. And the minimum is 15 employees, which rules out the smallest teams altogether.
On infrastructure Sesame HR is mixed rather than pure: hosting is OVHcloud, with Amazon Web Services in the EU alongside it, and customers in Latin America are additionally served through IPXON in the United States and Latin America. It states ISO 27001.
What the company does not publish is anything about itself — no founding year, no owners or investors are named on the site or in the legal notice, which for a platform holding personnel records is a gap a buyer should close in the contract rather than assume away.
What Sesame HR does well
- Time clock, shifts and working-time records are the core of the product, not an add-on
- Four plans with published prices, from €4.75 per employee per month excl. VAT
- 14-day free trial with no commitment
- Spanish operating company, hosting on OVHcloud with AWS in the EU
- States ISO 27001
Where Sesame HR falls short
- Minimum of 15 employees — smaller teams cannot buy it
- The Spanish price page shows a second, higher set of figures without saying which billing cycle each belongs to
- Amazon Web Services sits alongside OVHcloud, so it is not European infrastructure throughout
- Latin-American customers are served through IPXON in the US and Latin America
- Names no founding year, owners or investors anywhere on its own site
Standout feature. Built around the clock-in: Sesame HR is the platform where the working-time record is the product and the personnel file is what grew around it.
London, United Kingdom
Founded 2015
Flat monthly price by headcount band, excl. 20% UK VAT: 1–4 people £21, 5–14 £47, 15–29 £108, 30–49 £185, 50–99 £323, 250+ £754
7-day free trial, no credit card
Best for: Small British teams that want a flat monthly price instead of a per-seat one
CharlieHR is priced the way small companies actually budget. Instead of a per-seat rate that changes with every hire and leaver, it charges a flat monthly amount per headcount band, excluding 20% UK VAT: £21 for 1 to 4 people, £47 for 5 to 14, £108 for 15 to 29, £185 for 30 to 49, £323 for 50 to 99 and £754 from 250.
Every band is published, so the cost of the next two years can be worked out before the first call.
The trade-off is the step: hiring a fifteenth person takes the bill from £47 to £108 overnight, which is a bigger jump than a per-employee platform would produce.
The product is the small-team essentials — onboarding, time off and performance reviews — run by Charlie OS Limited in London, with the founders still holding significant control of the 2015 parent company.
Data sits in Ireland, inside the EU, on Amazon Web Services. On independent assurance it is the best documented tool in this category: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials, two audits rather than a GDPR statement. There is a 7-day free trial and no credit card is asked for.
It ranks last here on the first thing this site weighs, which is where the contracting company sits.
CharlieHR is British, and the United Kingdom is outside the EEA; transfers rest on the European Commission's adequacy decision, which is a political instrument subject to review rather than a permanent arrangement, and an EU employer has to accept that dependency for its personnel records.
The infrastructure is American too, even though the region is Irish. And the company publishes no full sub-processor list, so the parties behind the platform cannot be enumerated from the website the way they can with Sesame HR or Lucca.
What CharlieHR does well
- Flat monthly price per headcount band, every band published, from £21 for 1 to 4 people
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials — two independent audits, the most documented here
- Data held in Ireland, inside the EU
- 7-day free trial with no credit card
- Founder-controlled London company rather than a private-equity holding
Where CharlieHR falls short
- UK company outside the EEA — transfers depend on an adequacy decision that is periodically reviewed
- Runs on Amazon Web Services, so the Irish region is American infrastructure
- No full sub-processor list published
- Band pricing means one extra hire can raise the bill sharply, from £47 to £108 at fifteen people
- Small-team essentials only — no payroll execution and no depth for a large workforce
Standout feature. Two audits and a price list: CharlieHR is the only tool here that holds both ISO 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials and publishes what every headcount band pays.
Castanet-Tolosan (Toulouse), France
Founded 2006
Business (11–500 employees) from €4.20 per employee/month excl. VAT, degressive; 1–10 employees through an accounting firm; 500+ on quote
30-day free trial, no commitment
Best for: French SMEs wanting leave, time and expenses in one place, tested for a month first
Eurécia covers the administrative middle of French SME life: leave and time tracking, expense reports and payroll preparation, with the personnel file underneath. Eurécia SAS has been trading since 2006 from Castanet-Tolosan just outside Toulouse, which makes it one of the older independents in the category, and the product reads as one built by people who kept adding what their customers asked for rather than one designed around a category label.
Pricing is published and the trial is the most generous here: the Business plan for 11 to 500 employees starts at €4.20 per employee per month excluding VAT and is degressive, so the rate falls as headcount rises, with 500-plus quoted on request.
A 30-day free trial with no commitment is long enough to run a full month-end — the point at which leave, time and expenses either reconcile or do not. Companies of 1 to 10 employees cannot buy directly at all; that band is sold through an accounting firm, which suits French practice and irritates everyone else.
The weak point is the one this site weighs second. Eurécia hosts in France, but on Google Cloud Platform: a French company under French jurisdiction, on American infrastructure.
That is a materially different proposition from Lucca on OVHcloud, and it is the reason Eurécia sits where it does rather than higher. Nor does the company publish an independent security certification of its own — its ITrust label and the certifications held by its partners are not the same thing as a certificate in Eurécia's name.
What Eurécia does well
- 30-day free trial with no commitment, long enough to cover a full month-end
- Published starting price of €4.20 per employee per month excl. VAT, degressive with headcount
- Leave, time tracking, expense reports and payroll preparation in one product
- French company trading since 2006 from the Toulouse area, under French jurisdiction
Where Eurécia falls short
- Hosted on Google Cloud Platform — French data on American infrastructure
- Publishes no independent security certification in its own name
- Companies of 1 to 10 employees can only buy through an accounting firm
- Above 500 employees the price is quoted rather than published
- Strongest fit is France; it is not built for a multi-country employer
Standout feature. A month to find out: Eurécia's 30-day trial is the only one here long enough to put a complete leave, expense and payroll-preparation cycle through the software before buying.
Madrid, Spain
Plans from €6 per employee/month, priced by module (time, team management, talent, recruitment, training, finance); Pro and Avanzado tiers quoted on contact
15-day free trial, requested through a demo form
Best for: Spanish SMBs wanting a certified all-in-one HR suite
Bizneo HR is a Madrid all-in-one that puts more independent certification behind its GDPR claim than most of the category: ISO 27001 for information security, ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO/IEC 42001 for the AI systems it now ships as chatbots and AI agents, and Spain's own Esquema Nacional de Seguridad on top.
The company states plainly that its servers sit in EU instances at all times, which for a platform holding sickness records and salary data is the claim this whole category is built around, backed here by more paperwork than most competitors bother to publish.
The product itself is broad rather than narrow: time tracking, absence and shift management, a talent suite with competencies, performance, compensation and rotation, recruitment ATS, training administration, expense and budget tools, and a payroll module, plus AI agents layered across the workflow.
Pricing starts from €6 per employee per month for the entry modules, but the two fuller plans, Pro and Avanzado, are quoted rather than published, and a 15-day trial is issued after a demo request rather than self-service. Its strongest fit is a Spanish or Latin-market employer already comfortable buying HR software through a sales conversation.
What Bizneo HR does well
- ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 42001 certified, plus Spain's ENS
- States its servers are always in EU instances
- Broad module set: time, talent, recruitment, training, finance, payroll
- Entry pricing published from €6/employee/month
- AI agents and chatbots built into the workflow
Where Bizneo HR falls short
- Full Pro and Avanzado tiers quoted on contact, not published
- Trial requires a demo request rather than instant self-service
- No founding year published on the vendor's own pages
- Strongest fit is Spanish and Latin American markets
Standout feature. Bizneo HR carries more independent certification — ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 42001 and Spain's ENS — than any other platform in this category.
Montreuil, France
Founded 2017
Contact for pricing; no public price list
Demo on request
Best for: French companies wanting performance reviews and eNPS together
Elevo is a Paris-region talent suite built around structured review conversations, with a French accent: performance reviews and 360 feedback, a People Review module for calibrating talent decisions across teams, eNPS and pulse surveys for tracking engagement over time, competency mapping, training-budget management, and compensation planning. Elevo, the operating company, is based in Montreuil outside Paris and has run the product since 2017, recently joining forces with the Swedish assessment company Assessio to build a wider European HR-tech group.
Data is hosted in Europe, though Elevo does not name its infrastructure provider on its public pages, which is a step behind Personio's named AWS Frankfurt region or Lucca's named OVHcloud contract.
Pricing is quoted rather than published — there is no price list on the site, only a demo request — which puts it alongside Kenjo rather than alongside the vendors that publish a rate card. Against Treams, which publishes per-employee prices, Elevo's case rests on the People Review module and the Assessio pairing rather than on price transparency.
What Elevo does well
- Performance, People Review, eNPS and compensation in one suite
- People Review module for cross-team calibration, distinct from a single review cycle
- French company (Montreuil), running the product since 2017
- Data hosted in Europe
- Now paired with Assessio to build a wider European HR-tech group
Where Elevo falls short
- No public price list; quote only after a demo
- Infrastructure provider not named, unlike Personio or Lucca
- No independent security certification published
- Smaller and less documented than Treams
Standout feature. The only platform here with a dedicated People Review module for calibrating talent decisions across teams rather than one manager at a time.
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Three packages priced per company size, net per month plus VAT. For 30 employees: HR-Begleitung €930 per month (about €31 per employee), HR-Leitung €1,830 per month (about €61 per employee), HR-Abteilung €3,165 per month (about €106 per employee). One-off setup €490 (waived with yearly prepayment, which also gives 10% off). 3-month pilot, then cancellable monthly, setup refunded if not convinced after 3 months. Payroll through a partner, billed separately. Above 150 employees by arrangement.
Free 30-minute HR check by video; 3-month pilot with refund of the setup fee
Best for: German companies of 10 to 150 staff with no HR department
Lintelly is an outsourced HR department for companies with 10 to 150 employees in Germany, run by Nick Schäfer as a sole proprietorship in Frankfurt am Main. It comes with its own software for employee records, leave, onboarding and exits, an org chart, deadlines and risks, and a daily overview for the managing director.
The software drafts employment contracts, references and warnings from the company's own templates, and a named HR lead approves every document before it goes out. Setup takes about a week and can connect to Personio or another system already in use. The trust centre says the software and its backups run on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, and that its AI features call the Claude API of Anthropic in the US, with each AI function switchable off.
This is a service first. Prices start at €490 a month for the smallest companies and reach €930 a month for 30 employees on the lightest package, which is far above self-serve tools such as Kenjo or Personio. The site and the product are in German and built around German employment law, so it does not suit teams outside Germany.
What Lintelly does well
- Humans approve every contract, reference and warning
- Software and backups on servers in Falkenstein, Germany
- Built around German employment law and deadlines
- Free 30-minute HR check and a 3-month pilot with setup refund
- Payroll input prepared for your payroll office
Where Lintelly falls short
- Priced as a service, far above self-serve HR software
- German language and German employment law only
- Not a standalone self-service HRIS
- Operated by one person, no commercial register entry
Standout feature. An HR department delivered as software plus a named HR lead, for German companies without one.
Freiburg, Germany
Founded 1998
Per employee per month, modular
Demo on request
Best for: German mid-sized companies wanting HR, time and expenses in one place with payroll prepared for the accountant
HRworks GmbH has been building German HR software from Freiburg since 1998, and the scope reflects a company that grew with its customers rather than around a single feature: personnel files, time tracking, absence, travel expenses and payroll preparation in one modular system, priced per employee per month.
The word that matters there is preparation. HRworks assembles the payroll and hands it over; the statutory filing is typically done by the accountant or a payroll bureau, usually in DATEV.
For a German mid-sized company that already works that way, this is exactly the right shape and removes the double entry between HR and payroll. If you were hoping to bring filing in-house and drop the accountant, it is the wrong product, and no amount of module configuration changes that.
What HRworks does well
- HR, time tracking, absence and travel expenses in one system
- German company since 1998, German hosting
- Modular per-employee pricing
- Fits the accountant-files-it model that most German companies already use
Where HRworks falls short
- Prepares payroll rather than filing it
- Germany focused
- Pricing depends on which modules you take, so comparison needs a quote
Standout feature. Travel expenses taken seriously: a module most HR suites treat as an afterthought, in a market where it is a monthly reality.
Karlsruhe, Germany
Founded 2014
Per employee per month, published plans
Free trial
Best for: Shift-based businesses where the payroll problem starts with the rota
Papershift GmbH in Karlsruhe approaches payroll from an unusual end: rostering. For hospitality, retail, care and logistics, the hard part is not the gross-to-net calculation but knowing who actually worked which hours, at what surcharge, with which breaks. Papershift builds the schedule, records the time against it, applies the rules, and produces the numbers payroll needs.
That makes it a different purchase from the rest of this list, and comparing it on payroll features alone will mislead you. It prepares payroll rather than filing it, and a salaried office team with predictable hours will find most of it unused. For a company running shifts, the alternative is not another payroll product but a spreadsheet plus a monthly argument, and that comparison is far more favourable.
What Papershift does well
- Rostering, time tracking and surcharge rules built together
- Published per-employee plans and a free trial
- German company, German hosting
- Strong fit for hospitality, retail, care and logistics
Where Papershift falls short
- Prepares payroll, does not file it
- Little value for a salaried team with fixed hours
- Germany focused
Standout feature. It starts at the rota: for shift work, the payroll error is almost always made weeks before payroll runs.
London, United Kingdom
Plans from £5 per month (pricing page headline); Growth, Money and Tech modules on a quote; minimum 20 seats (checked 2 November 2026 on zelt.app/pricing).
Demo; no free trial stated
Best for: UK and European companies of 20 or more people wanting HR, payroll and performance in one account
Zelt is a London HR platform from Zelt Ltd (company number 12881631). It starts from the employee system of record, with time off, scheduling and contract execution, and adds payroll, benefits, devices and a Growth module with performance reviews, 360 feedback, goals and engagement surveys.
The pricing page gives a headline of plans from £5 per month and puts the Growth, Money and Tech modules on a quote, each with a minimum of 20 seats. The terms are an agreement with Zelt Ltd under English law, so the contract and courts are English rather than EU, although the EU has an adequacy decision for the UK.
Compared with the other suites here it is a good fit when HR, payroll and reviews should sit in one account; the pages we read do not name the data location or any security certification.
What Zelt does well
- HR record, time off, payroll and performance in one account
- Reviews with customisable forms, 360 feedback, goals and surveys
- Headline price from £5 per month
- Terms under English law with a single venue
- Employee and performance data in one place
Where Zelt falls short
- UK contracting party, outside the EU
- Module prices on a quote
- Minimum of 20 seats
- Data location and certifications not stated on the pages we read
Standout feature. Reviews, goals and surveys sit in the same account as payroll and device management.
