As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates 15Five 3/5 and Leapsome 3/5 in Talent Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick 15Five and 2 pick Leapsome. 15Five scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency, HRIS sync, integrations & data portability, Performance reviews & calibration, plus 2 more). Leapsome scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Works council, visibility & AI disclosure and European sovereignty). Provenance — 15Five: Rest of world; Leapsome: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The benches split rather than settle. 15Five's means lead on five criteria — performance reviews (7.3 to 6.7), goals and feedback (6.5 to 6.0), learning and development (6.3 to 6.0), integrations and portability (6.5 to 5.8) and pricing transparency (5.5 to 4.0) — and zero judges lean Leapsome on any of them. Leapsome leads on sovereignty (4.5 to 3.0) and codetermination and privacy (5.7 to 4.0), six judges leaning Leapsome on each with no ties. Weighted totals split too: the HR lead (6.4 to 6.0), the people analyst (6.7 to 6.0) and the skeptic (5.3 to 5.2) have 15Five ahead, while the works council (5.7 to 4.9) and the integrator (5.8 to 5.2) have Leapsome ahead; the SME owner's total shows no figure. Sovereignty attributes list Leapsome's data residency as EU only and jurisdiction as DE; 15Five's residency, jurisdiction and ownership as unknown; both carry US Cloud Act subprocess exposure.
Choose 15Five if
You need review cycles with auditable calibration — the 15Five verdict lists real-time calibration, a track-changes feed showing original versus calibrated scores, and rating-distribution reporting across managers, and four judges lean 15Five on performance reviews (7.3 to 6.7).
Your team depends on HRIS connections — the verdict lists sixteen named HRIS integrations with Okta and OneLogin provisioning, and integrations and portability leans 15Five four judges to zero (6.5 to 5.8).
You must budget before signing — 15Five publishes Perform at $11 and Engage at $4 per user per month, each billed annually, and pricing transparency leans 15Five six judges to zero (5.5 to 4.0).
You want succession planning in the same tool — the verdict lists a nine-box talent matrix with succession planning, within goals and feedback, where three judges lean 15Five (6.5 to 6.0).
Your priorities resemble the HR-lead and people-analyst weightings — those totals have 15Five ahead at 6.4 to 6.0 and 6.7 to 6.0.
Choose Leapsome if
You need EU-only data residency — the attributes list Leapsome's data residency as EU only and its legal-entity jurisdiction as DE, and sovereignty leans Leapsome six judges to zero (4.5 to 3.0).
Your works council scrutinizes codetermination and privacy — Leapsome leads 5.7 to 4.0 with six judges leaning its way, and the works-council judge totals 5.7 against 15Five's 4.9.
You require a published data processing agreement from a German-law entity — the Leapsome verdict credits Leapsome GmbH of Berlin, a published data processing agreement, and an EU/EEA-primary processing statement.
Your evaluation weights privacy and sovereignty heavily, as the integrator panel's does — that total has Leapsome ahead 5.8 to 5.2.
Your procurement calls for EU-made provenance — Leapsome is recorded as EU-made, from Leapsome GmbH in Berlin.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The HR IT Integrator
Connects the tool to the HR system and the identity provider and will be asked for the data when the contract ends. Wants org chart and manager relations synced from the HRIS, SSO and SCIM, a documented API, and a full export of reviews and goals rather than one PDF per person.
15Five
Leapsome
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Performance reviews & calibration
15Five
Self, manager, peer and upward reviews run on a quarterly or semi-annual cadence, and calibration is real functionality: calibrators adjust scores together in real time, a track-changes feed shows original versus calibrated scores, and reporting gives the distribution of ratings across managers. What the captured pages do not show is who may change a rating with what reason, an employee sign-off or acknowledgement step, or a documented rule for what the employee, manager and HR can each see. Export of evaluations and notes for HR records is stated in the privacy policy, which is the part I care about most.
Leapsome
The shared competency framework guides review questions per team and skill level, which gives criteria fixed per role rather than invented mid-cycle. We found no public information on employee sign-off, a documented rule for what the employee, manager and HR each see, or versioned criteria with attributed rating changes during calibration.
Goals, OKRs & continuous feedback
15Five
Weighted OKRs and goal management with automatic progress tracking via weekly check-ins, 1-on-1s where both sides add agenda items with notes and action items, High Fives recognition, and anytime feedback requests are all documented. The review side draws on this: AI-drafted reviews are stated to be grounded in reviews, goals, 1:1 notes and check-ins already in the system. I found no public information on goal cascading with dependencies and confidence tracking, a log of goal changes, or which parts of 1:1 notes are private versus shared.
Leapsome
Goals and OKRs run at company, team and individual level with alignment, 1:1 and team meetings are driven by structured agendas, and feedback, praise and meeting notes are pulled into the review — so the year-end review draws on the recorded year rather than memory, with goal progress linked to reviews. Public praise posts reach Slack or Microsoft Teams. We found no public information on goal change history, dependencies or confidence tracking, or on private versus shared parts of 1:1 notes.
Learning, skills & succession
15Five
Career paths and development plans, competencies and skills mapping, a nine-box talent matrix and succession planning in Growth Studio, plus microlearning modules and a named LearnUpon LMS integration give this real substance beyond rating people. Skills profiles with gaps against role requirements, learning paths with completion tracking, and internal mobility against open positions are not documented on the captured pages, so this sits in the middle range for me.
Leapsome
A shared competency framework defines company-wide or team-specific skills visualised by level, learning paths carry enrollment, progress and completion tracking with quizzes, and a marketplace of pre-integrated providers covers compliance and soft-skills training — with learning connected to Goals, Surveys, HRIS and Reviews and the framework guiding review questions. We found no public information on skills-gap analysis against role requirements, career paths, talent reviews such as a nine-box, or succession planning for key roles.
Works council, visibility & AI disclosure
15Five
AI disclosure is the strong part: every agent is named (AMAYA, Kona, AI-Assisted Reviews, Focus Briefs, Meeting Assistant), agents surface only what current permission settings allow, a human is stated to be in the loop for every decision, and the generative-AI terms expressly prohibit using output for employment decisions about a person. For a works agreement, though, I found no public information on a minimum group size for anonymous survey results, access logging, retention configurable per data type, or documentation aimed at works councils.
Leapsome
The AI features are the best-documented part: each is named with what it does and its inputs, OpenAI is named as the technology provider, the admin can switch Leapsome AI off, every output is a draft until a human acts on it, and the terms prohibit automated employment-related decisions without human review; a trust centre publishes the DPA, subprocessor list and AI transparency documentation. Surveys offer granular customisation including anonymity settings. We found no public information on a stated minimum group size for anonymous results, access logging for review data, retention configurable per data type, or documentation aimed at works councils.
HRIS sync, integrations & data portability
15Five
Sixteen named HRIS systems behind an automated HRIS Connector, Okta and OneLogin provisioning sync, Teams and Slack, and API and SFTP listed as integration routes; the privacy policy also states that evaluations, notes and other performance data can be exported for maintaining HR records. As the one who will be asked for the data when the contract ends, I found no public information on org-chart and manager-relation sync, SCIM is not named, no API limits or webhooks are published, and the terms warn that account data may be permanently lost on termination with backup left to the customer.
Leapsome
The Personio connection is the real thing for my purposes: a user account is created for every new joiner, job title, department and manager are synced, and teams with manager/direct-report reporting lines are built from Personio data — that is the org-chart relation I need, with customer setup documentation published. Single sign-on, Slack and Microsoft Teams, and help with custom API and SFTP integrations are documented, and the terms grant a contractual right to download customer data as CSV or similar readable formats within 30 days of termination. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, webhooks, published API limits, further named HRIS systems, or export of attachments.
European sovereignty
15Five
The contracting entity is 15Five, Inc. under California law, the privacy policy states personal information may be transferred to and stored in the United States, the United Kingdom or the customer's country, and OpenAI appears in the AI terms while the full sub-processor list was not captured. A Data Processing Agreement with Standard Contractual Clauses is offered on request and an Irish supervisory authority is named as contact, which is what lifts this above the bottom.
Leapsome
The contracting picture is European: Leapsome GmbH at Brunnenstraße 153 in Berlin, registered at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg under HRB 187546 B, German governing law with exclusive Berlin jurisdiction, and a published data processing agreement; the privacy policy states processing predominantly within the EU/EEA, with SCCs or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for US transfers. We found no public information naming the infrastructure that hosts the platform data — the infrastructure named in the privacy policy covers the vendor's own website — and the subprocessor list page was not captured, while OpenAI is named as the AI provider without a stated processing region.
Pricing transparency
15Five
Perform at $11 per user per month and Engage at $4 per user per month, each billed annually with the module contents of every tier published, plus manager packages starting at $49/month. The Compensation module and the combined platform carry no figure on the captured pages, and minimum term, minimum headcount and VAT treatment are absent, so I cannot compute an annual invoice from the public pages alone.
Leapsome
The HRIS line is priced publicly with its basis — "7 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat" for the basis package and "10 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat" for Pro, in EUR, USD or GBP on monthly or annual billing — but the captured prices cover the HRIS line only; the talent modules and the add-ons such as salary benchmarking and learning courses are named without prices attached, so the annual cost of a reviews-and-goals deployment is not computable from these pages. Contract terms are public: 14-day trial, 12-month auto-renewal, cancellation two months before term end on annual contracts, fees non-refundable, licences not reducible during the term, monthly licence reviews, and renewal increases capped at 5 % with 90 days' notice. We found no public information on VAT treatment or minimum headcount.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
15Five
Leapsome
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
US CLOUD Act reach
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates both 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick 15Five and 2 pick Leapsome. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is 15Five or Leapsome European?
15Five is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Leapsome is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.