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 People Analyst
Owns the skills model, the succession bench and the training budget. Wants skills profiles with gaps against role requirements, learning tied to those gaps rather than to a course catalogue, talent reviews per key role, and data that can be exported and analysed outside the tool.
15Five
This judge's pick
Leapsome
Criterion by criterion
Performance reviews & calibration
15Five
Calibrators adjust scores in real time with a track-changes activity feed showing original versus calibrated scores, rating distributions reported across managers, and past calibration changes and previous cycle ratings visible in context; self, manager, peer and upward reviews run quarterly or semi-annually with a competency assessment and competencies and skills mapping. Evaluations and notes are exportable for HR records, though we found no public information on employee sign-off or a documented rule for who may see what in a review.
Leapsome
Configurable review cycles with templates, question banks and recurring automations, 360° plus project, leadership and external review types, and calibration meetings supported by AI pre-reads that flag manager leniency while every adjustment stays under human review are all documented. Review questions are steered by a competency framework defined per skill and level, which is what I want to see — criteria fixed before the cycle rather than invented in it. We found no public information on employee sign-off, rating-distribution views during calibration, or the visibility rules stating what the employee, the manager and HR can each see, so I stop below the higher marks.
Goals, OKRs & continuous feedback
15Five
Weighted OKRs and goals with weekly check-ins that automatically track progress, 1-on-1s with shared agendas, notes, action items and templates, requestable feedback and High Fives recognition — and the AI-assisted review is drafted from the reviews, goals, 1:1 notes and check-ins already in the system, so the year-end cycle starts from the record. We found no public information on goal-change history, private versus shared note sections, or check-ins submitted from Teams or Slack; the captured Teams integration describes High Fives.
Leapsome
Goals at company, team and individual level with alignment, 1:1 meetings on structured agendas, and instant feedback and public praise integrating with Slack and Microsoft Teams are documented. Crucially for me, goal progress, peer feedback, praise and meeting notes are pulled into review writing, so the year-end review draws on the recorded year rather than memory; we found no public information on goal cascading with dependencies, logged goal history, or check-ins run directly from Teams or Slack.
Learning, skills & succession
15Five
A drag-and-drop nine-box talent matrix, succession planning and individual development plans inside Growth Studio, career paths and development plans, competencies and skills mapping, microlearnings, and a named LearnUpon LMS integration give me the talent-review and bench-planning surface. We found no public information on skills profiles with gaps measured against role requirements, learning paths with completion tracking or mandatory training, or internal mobility shown against open positions, so the succession bench is visible but not measurable from the captured pages.
Leapsome
A shared competency framework with skills defined and visualised by level, an integrated LMS with enrolment, progress and completion analytics, a marketplace of pre-integrated providers for compliance and soft-skills content, and AI-drafted learning paths tied to goals and connected to reviews are all documented. What I do not find is the core of my brief: we found no public information on skills profiles with gap analysis against role requirements, talent reviews or a nine-box, or succession plans per key role — the succession bench is simply not evidenced on the captured pages, and nothing shows certificates or training records as exportable.
Works council, visibility & AI disclosure
15Five
The AI features are named and described (AMAYA, Kona, AI-Assisted Reviews, Focus Briefs, Meeting Assistant), agents surface only what current permission settings allow, a human in the loop is claimed for every decision, and the generative AI terms prohibit using output for employment decisions — useful clauses for a works agreement. We found no public information on a minimum group size for anonymous results, an admin option to switch AI features off, access logging, or retention configurable per data type; the captured retention policy only says data is kept while the account is active.
Leapsome
AI features are individually described — review drafting, meeting summarisation, survey-theme clustering, competency-framework drafting — with OpenAI named as the provider, an admin able to disable Leapsome AI at any time, agents confined to the permissions already set, and the terms barring automated employment-related decisions without human review; every AI output is stated to be a draft with no standing until a human makes it theirs. Anonymity settings exist for surveys and templates. We found no public information on a stated minimum group size for anonymous results, access logging on review data, retention or deletion configurable per data type for review content, or documentation aimed at a works council, so works-agreement readiness cannot be confirmed from these pages.
HRIS sync, integrations & data portability
15Five
A maintained HRIS connector with automatic syncing covers sixteen named HR systems from Workday and UKG to BambooHR and Gusto, user provisioning syncs through Okta and OneLogin, Teams and Slack integrations exist alongside an API and SFTP, and customers may export evaluations, notes and other performance data for HR records. We found no public information on webhooks, published API limits, or a bulk export of the complete goal and feedback history — and the terms state account data may be permanently lost on termination, with backup the customer's responsibility.
Leapsome
Personio sync is documented in detail — automatic account creation, job title, department and manager synced, teams and manager/direct-report reporting lines built in Leapsome — alongside single sign-on, Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations, a stated 100+ connected systems, and custom API and SFTP help. On exit, customer data can be downloaded in CSV or similar readable formats within thirty days of termination, which satisfies my minimum for taking data out and analysing it elsewhere; we found no public information on SCIM provisioning, webhooks, published API limits, a second named HRIS, or a bulk export of the complete review, goal and feedback history.
European sovereignty
15Five
The contracting entity is 15Five, Inc. of San Francisco under California governing law and venue, the privacy policy states personal information may be transferred and stored in the United States, the United Kingdom or the customer's country, and OpenAI is named in the generative AI terms as a sub-processor. A data processing agreement with standard contractual clauses and an Irish supervisory authority contact are published, which is the level the captured evidence reaches; we found no public information on EU hosting or a European contracting entity.
Leapsome
The contracting entity is provable and European — Leapsome GmbH in Berlin, registered at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg under German governing law with Berlin as venue — and a data processing agreement is published. The privacy policy states data is processed primarily within the EU/EEA with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework as the fallback for US transfers, but hosting for the platform itself is not confirmed on the captured pages, the subprocessor list was not among them, and OpenAI is named as the AI provider without a stated processing region — a gap that matters when the data describes employees who never chose this vendor.
Pricing transparency
15Five
Perform at "$11 per user per month (billed annually)" and Engage at "$4 per user per month (billed annually)" are each published with pricing basis, billing period and a detailed module list, so the reviews, goals and survey costs are computable. Manager training shows only "starting at $49/month", and we found no public price for the Compensation module, nor minimum headcount, minimum term or VAT treatment.
Leapsome
Per-employee monthly prices are public for the HRIS tiers — the base package at 7 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat and Pro at 10 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat, shown at 5 € under a promotion running to 31 December — with monthly and annual billing, three currencies, and the accelerator programme's one-time 24.000 € fee displayed. The talent modules I would actually buy — reviews, goals, learning, surveys, compensation — and add-ons such as salary benchmarking and learning courses are named on the pricing page but show no prices on the captured pages, and we found no public information on minimum headcount or VAT treatment, so the annual invoice for a reviews-plus-learning deployment is not computable from public material. Contract mechanics are public: twelve-month auto-renewal, two months' cancellation notice, non-refundable fees with licences that cannot be reduced mid-term, and renewal increases capped at 5 % with ninety days' notice.
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.