Every European HR software tool reviewed
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 — Dialog, Kenjo and PayFit all 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.
Netherlands
Founded 2015
Contact for pricing
Demo on request
Best for: European companies wanting continuous performance conversations
Dialog is built on the observation that annual performance reviews mostly measure how well people remember December. Instead it structures performance as a continuous conversation: ongoing feedback rather than a once-a-year event, 360-degree feedback gathering perspective from peers and reports rather than only from a manager, engagement surveys tracking how the organisation actually feels over time, and OKR management connecting individual goals to company ones. People analytics reports on the whole thing.
Dialog is part of Visma, the Norwegian business software group, and operates from the Netherlands with data in EU data centres — so the backing is a large established European group rather than venture funding with an exit timetable, which for a system holding employment records is a reasonable thing to prefer.
The interface is designed for employees rather than only for HR, which matters because a performance tool nobody outside HR wants to open produces compliance rather than insight. Integration capabilities connect it to the wider Visma ecosystem and beyond. Pricing is quoted rather than published, which makes comparison harder and is common at this end of the market.
What Dialog does well
- Continuous performance conversations rather than an annual event
- 360-degree feedback, engagement surveys and OKRs in one platform
- Backed by the Visma group rather than venture funding
- EU data centres, Dutch operation, GDPR by establishment
- Interface designed for employees, not only for HR
Where Dialog falls short
- Pricing quoted rather than published
- Performance and engagement only — no HR administration
- Smaller ecosystem than the international incumbents
- Needs leadership commitment to produce anything
Standout feature. Visma backing on employment data: Dialog is the only performance platform here owned by an established European group rather than by investors with an exit horizon.
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.
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 Leapsome or Dialog
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 2016
From about $8/user/month
Demo on request
Best for: Companies focused on performance, development and engagement
Leapsome covers the whole people-enablement surface rather than performance alone, and the breadth is what distinguishes it from a review tool. Performance reviews and 360-degree feedback, goals and OKR management, engagement surveys, continuous feedback and praise, one-to-one meeting management with agendas and follow-through, learning and development, and compensation management — so the conversation about how someone is doing, what they are learning and what they are paid happens in one place rather than three.
Leapsome GmbH is based in Berlin with EU processing, and AI-assisted features help with the part managers find hardest, which is writing useful feedback rather than generic praise. Pricing starts at about $8 per user per month.
The honest caveat applies to the whole performance category rather than to Leapsome specifically: the platform can schedule the review, collect the feedback and track the goal, but it cannot make a manager have an honest conversation. Organisations that deploy performance software to avoid that conversation get high completion rates and empty comments, which no dashboard reports.
What Leapsome does well
- Performance, OKRs, engagement, learning and compensation in one platform
- One-to-one meeting management with agendas and follow-through
- AI-assisted feedback writing, which is the hard part for managers
- Berlin company with EU processing
- From about $8/user/month
Where Leapsome falls short
- No HR administration — needs a separate system of record
- Priced per user, so it scales with headcount
- Depends entirely on leadership commitment to work
- Pricing in dollars despite the German base
Standout feature. One-to-ones as a first-class feature: Leapsome is the only platform here that treats the recurring manager conversation as the product rather than as a calendar entry.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founded 2015
From about €199/month (Launch plan)
Free trial
Best for: Growing companies that hire collaboratively across teams
Recruitee is a dedicated applicant tracking system rather than a recruitment module, and the difference is collaboration. Hiring in most growing companies is not done by recruiters alone — the team the person will join reads the CVs, runs the interviews and forms the opinion — and Recruitee is built for that, with structured team feedback, evaluation templates and shared candidate pipelines so a hiring decision is visible rather than assembled from Slack messages.
Around the pipeline sit a careers site builder for a branded application experience, job distribution and sourcing to reach candidates, interview scheduling and communication, and hiring analytics.
Recruitee is based in Amsterdam and now part of Tellent, with EU processing and GDPR handling — which matters for recruitment specifically because candidate data has retention rules and rejected applicants have deletion rights that a shared inbox cannot satisfy.
Pricing starts at about €199 per month for the Launch plan, priced per company rather than per employee. That is a real cost for a company hiring occasionally, and cheap for one hiring continuously — the break-even is roughly whether you have an open role most of the time.
What Recruitee does well
- Built for collaborative hiring, not recruiter-only workflows
- Careers site builder plus job distribution and sourcing
- Structured team feedback and evaluation templates
- Candidate data retention and deletion handled properly
- Dutch company, EU processing, priced per company not per employee
Where Recruitee falls short
- From about €199/month, expensive for occasional hiring
- Recruitment only — no HR administration
- Now part of Tellent rather than independent
- Overkill if you hire a few people a year
Standout feature. Hiring decisions you can audit: Recruitee is the only tool here where the team's evaluation of a candidate is a structured record rather than a Slack thread.
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.
