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 Skeptic
Has heard "high-performance culture", "bias-free reviews" and "AI-powered growth" from every vendor. Reads for the anonymity threshold behind the anonymous survey, what the AI review summary was built from, whether the "skills engine" is more than a tag list, and whether five years of reviews leave with the customer.
15Five
This judge's pick
Leapsome
Criterion by criterion
Performance reviews & calibration
15Five
Calibration is documented with unusual specificity: calibrators adjust scores in real time, reporting shows the distribution of ratings across managers, an activity feed shows original versus calibrated scores, and past calibration changes and previous cycle ratings sit beside the person being discussed. We found no public information on employee sign-off or acknowledgement, configurable reviewer selection, or a published rule for what the employee, manager and HR can each see — the only visibility statement is that AI agents respect the account's current permission settings.
Leapsome
Reviews adapt to project-based, 360°, leadership and external review types, run as recurring cycles with customizable rules and automated notifications, and are steered by a competency framework that guides questions per role and level. Calibration meetings get AI pre-reads flagging manager leniency with every adjustment under human review — a bias check of sorts — but we found no public information on rating distributions across teams, employee sign-off, or who may see each rating.
Goals, OKRs & continuous feedback
15Five
Check-ins that automatically track progress toward goals and OKRs, weighted OKR management, 1-on-1s with shared agendas, notes and action items, requested feedback and High Fives recognition are all documented, with Slack and Teams carrying recognition and notifications into the workflow. We found no public information on cascading with dependencies, goal-change history, which parts of 1-on-1 notes are private versus shared, or feedback requests being pulled into the next review.
Leapsome
Goals and OKRs sit at company, team and individual level with alignment, 1:1s and team meetings run on structured agendas, and recognition lands company-wide and in Slack or Teams. Managers draw on past performance, peer feedback and goal progress when writing reviews, so the cycle does not start from memory; we found no public information on goal change history, dependencies and confidence tracking, or private versus shared note parts.
Learning, skills & succession
15Five
Succession planning, a nine-box talent matrix, career paths, individual development plans and competency assessment are named as shipping features, and microlearnings plus a LearnUpon integration cover learning content. The competency side is a feature-list label so far: we found no public information on skills gaps measured against role requirements, learning-path completion tracking, or learning outcomes linked to reviews — and Growth Studio is described as a new module the platform is expanding with.
Leapsome
A shared competency framework defines skills by level with growth pathways visualized, learning paths track enrollment, progress and completion with quizzes assessing skill growth, and pre-integrated third-party providers cover compliance and soft-skills content. Learning connects to goals, surveys, HRIS and reviews; we found no public information on talent reviews such as a nine-box, succession plans, skills gaps against role requirements, or SCORM support.
Works council, visibility & AI disclosure
15Five
The AI terms are the strongest disclosure here: services including Kona are named, output must not be used for employment decisions about a person, neither 15Five nor OpenAI may train on customer AI content, and the privacy policy states Kona collects meeting transcripts and recordings. For the works-agreement questions we found no public information on a minimum group size for anonymous survey results, access logging, configurable retention per data type, an admin switch for the AI features, or material addressed to a works council — notable given the AI is said to draw on compensation and tenure data.
Leapsome
Anonymity settings are part of the review configuration, but we found no public information on the minimum group size behind them — the first number a works council will ask for. The AI side is disclosed more frankly than most: OpenAI is named, the feature can be disabled, outputs are drafts without standing until a human adopts them, and the terms exclude automated employment decisions without human review; we found no public information on access logging, retention settings for review data, or works-agreement documentation.
HRIS sync, integrations & data portability
15Five
Sixteen named HRIS vendors behind an automated connector, Okta and OneLogin provisioning, Teams, Slack, Google Calendar, Jira, Salesforce and GitHub, plus an API and SFTP, make the integration surface broad. On portability the captured pages point in two directions: the privacy policy affirms export of evaluations, notes and performance data for HR records, while the terms state account data may be permanently lost upon termination and put backup on the customer; we found no public information on SCIM, webhooks, published API limits, or a documented full export of goal and feedback history.
Leapsome
Personio is the one named HR system, syncing continuously — job title, department, manager and the reporting lines themselves — with SSO listed and a contractual right to download customer data as CSV within thirty days of termination. Custom API and SFTP integration is offered as a service and praise reaches Slack and Teams; we found no public information on other named HR systems, SCIM, webhooks, or a documented public API with limits.
European sovereignty
15Five
Contracting is with 15Five, Inc. of San Francisco under California law and venue, the privacy policy describes transfer and storage in the United States, the United Kingdom or the customer's country, the AI terms name OpenAI, and Zuora, Inc. processes payments. A data processing agreement with standard contractual clauses and an Irish supervisory-authority contact are published, but we found no public information showing EU hosting or an EU contracting entity.
Leapsome
The terms and legal notice name Leapsome GmbH at a Berlin address under German law with Berlin jurisdiction and a published data processing agreement; the independently sourced sovereignty data nonetheless records entity jurisdiction and hosting as unknown, with the EU/EEA statement sitting in the website privacy policy rather than a product hosting commitment. OpenAI is named for the AI features without a processing region, and the referenced subprocessor list was not captured — ISO 27001, SOC 2 and an "EU AI Act konform" claim are published badges, not a chain of custody.
Pricing transparency
15Five
Two tiers are priced publicly with their basis and billing period — Perform at $11 per user per month and Engage at $4 per user per month, both billed annually — with each tier's modules named and the AI features inside Perform rather than as a priced add-on; manager coaching packages appear "starting at $49/month". A buyer still cannot compute the real invoice: the Compensation module appears in the product navigation with no published price, and we found no public information on minimum term, minimum headcount, implementation fees or VAT treatment.
Leapsome
The captured pricing pages price the HRIS packages — a Basis package at 7 € per employee per month and a Pro package at 10 €, shown promotional at 5 € — with monthly or annual billing, EUR/USD/GBP, and add-ons named. We found no public information on prices for the talent modules themselves, on add-on pricing, minimum headcount or VAT treatment, so the annual cost of the review and learning stack cannot be computed from public pages.
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.