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 Works Council Member
Has to sign the works agreement before any of this goes live. Asks who can read a manager's private note, how small a team may be before survey results stop being anonymous, how long ratings are kept, and whether any AI feature summarises or scores colleagues without a human deciding.
15Five
Leapsome
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Performance reviews & calibration
15Five
The review machinery is real: self, manager, peer and upward reviews run quarterly or semi-annually, calibrators adjust scores in real time, an activity feed shows original versus calibrated scores, and reporting shows the distribution of ratings across managers. I found no public information on employee sign-off, on rules for what the employee, the manager and HR may each see, or on review criteria fixed and versioned before the cycle begins. With AI-drafted reviews grounded in performance data, I would want every AI touch in the cycle named in the works agreement.
Leapsome
Cycles are genuinely configurable — recurring reviews with custom rules and workflows, templates and question banks, and 360°, project, leadership or external review types — with a shared competency framework guiding the questions per team or role, and calibration pre-reads that flag manager leniency while every adjustment stays under human review, which is the right order of things. We found no public information on employee sign-off or acknowledgement, on the rule for what the employee, the manager and HR may each see, or on whether rating changes during calibration are attributed and reasoned.
Goals, OKRs & continuous feedback
15Five
Weighted OKRs tracked organisation-wide, weekly check-ins that automatically track goal progress, 1:1s with a shared agenda plus notes and action items, anytime feedback requests and High Fives recognition — and the AI features draw on check-ins, 1:1 notes and goals, so the review is not written from memory. I found no public information on goal change history, cascading with dependencies and confidence levels, or which parts of a 1:1 note remain private to the manager. Slack and Teams appear for High Fives and notifications rather than for running check-ins.
Leapsome
Company, team and individual goals with alignment, 1:1 and team meetings run on a structured agenda, private feedback outside the cycles and public praise into Slack or Teams, and the review draws on goal progress, feedback, praise and meeting notes instead of starting from memory. We found no public information on goal change history, dependencies or confidence tracking, or on which parts of 1:1 notes are private versus shared — the first question the works council will ask.
Learning, skills & succession
15Five
Growth Studio bundles development plans, PIPs and succession planning; the Perform tier names a nine-box talent matrix, career paths and development plans, and competencies and skills mapping; and LearnUpon is a named LMS integration alongside manager training packages starting at $49/month. I found no public information on skills gaps measured against role requirements, learning paths with completion tracking or mandatory training, or internal mobility against open positions. Named succession planning is a start, but for a talent review I would need to see what the nine-box actually records about each person.
Leapsome
A real competency framework — company-wide or team-specific skills defined and visualised by level, optionally drafted by AI with admin approval — sits alongside an integrated LMS with learning paths, enrolment, progress and completion tracking, quizzes, and a marketplace of pre-integrated providers for compliance training, all linked to goals and reviews. We found no public information on succession planning, talent reviews such as a nine-box, skills-gap analysis against role requirements, or internal mobility against open positions.
Works council, visibility & AI disclosure
15Five
Points I can build on: the AI features are named (AMAYA, Kona, AI-Assisted Reviews, Focus Briefs, Meeting Assistant) with their inputs described, agents surface only what existing permission settings allow, the vendor states a human is in the loop for every decision, and the generative-AI terms prohibit using output for employment decisions about a person; Kona's collection of meeting transcripts and recordings is at least disclosed. But I found no public information on a minimum group size for anonymous survey results, on documented visibility rules per role for review data, on access logging, or on configurable retention and deletion per data type — retention is one sentence about keeping data while the account exists. Without those, this cannot go into a works agreement as it stands.
Leapsome
The AI disclosure is the strongest part: features are described with their inputs, OpenAI is named as the provider, customer data is not used for model training without express consent, the admin can switch Leapsome AI off, outputs are drafts with no standing until a human decides, agent actions are confirmed, and the vendor states EU AI Act conformity. For the works agreement itself we found no public information on the minimum group size behind anonymous results — anonymity settings are named, a figure is not — nor on access logging for review data, retention and deletion of review data, or documentation aimed at a works council.
HRIS sync, integrations & data portability
15Five
Sixteen named HRIS systems (ADP, BambooHR, Workday, UKG, Rippling among them) with automatic sync set up in minutes, Okta and OneLogin provisioning that onboards, updates and deactivates users, Teams and Slack, an API and SFTP, and a stated right to export evaluations, notes and other performance data. I found no public information on published API limits, SCIM, webhooks, or a bulk export of the complete review, goal and feedback history. The terms also warn that account data 'may be permanently lost upon termination' and put backups on the customer — securing a full export before contract end would be a condition for me.
Leapsome
The Personio sync is documented properly — automatic account creation on onboarding, job title, department, manager, and even teams and reporting lines carried over — with Single Sign-On, Slack and Teams, a claim of over 100 connected systems, and help with custom API and SFTP integrations. Export at contract end is CSV within 30 days; we found no public information on SCIM provisioning, webhooks, published API limits, or a bulk export of the complete review, goal and feedback history.
European sovereignty
15Five
The contracting entity is 15Five, Inc. of San Francisco with California law and San Francisco venue, personal information may be transferred and stored in the United States, the United Kingdom or the customer's country, and OpenAI appears in the AI terms while Zuora, Inc. processes payments — the captured pages state no EU hosting. A Data Processing Agreement with Standard Contractual Clauses is offered on request and the Ireland Data Protection Commissioner is named as the European supervisory authority, which is the minimum a European customer needs to start. For data about employees who never chose this vendor, that is thin.
Leapsome
The contracting party is Leapsome GmbH at Brunnenstraße 153, Berlin, registered at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, under German law with Berlin as venue, with a published data processing agreement, and the privacy policy states that data is processed primarily within the EU/EEA. For the chain that matters to us — who summarises our people's reviews — OpenAI is named as the AI technology provider without a stated processing region, and while a trust centre announces a subprocessor list, we found no public information on its entries or their locations.
Pricing transparency
15Five
Perform is $11 per user per month and Engage is $4 per user per month, each billed annually, with the contents of each tier listed — AI-Assisted Reviews, the talent matrix and career paths sit in Perform, surveys in Engage — and manager coaching packages start at $49/month. I found no public price for the Compensation and Outcomes Dashboard modules, and no public information on minimum headcount, minimum term or VAT treatment. A buyer can price the core modules but not the whole platform from public pages alone.
Leapsome
The pricing page names the basis per employee per month, monthly or annual billing, EUR, USD and GBP, HRIS Basis at 7 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat, a one-time accelerator programme at 24.000 €, and the terms give a 12-month auto-renewal with two-month cancellation notice and a 14-day trial — though the captured pricing pages give different figures for the Pro package (10 € and 5 €/Mitarbeiter/Monat). We found no public information on prices for the talent modules themselves — reviews, goals, surveys, learning — on add-on prices for salary benchmarking and learning courses, on VAT treatment, or on 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.