As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates absence.io 2/5 and Timetastic 2/5 in Absence Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick absence.io and 2 pick Timetastic. absence.io scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty, Sick leave, eAU & continued pay, Pricing transparency, plus 2 more). Timetastic scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Health data, access & works council and Requests, approvals & team calendar). Provenance — absence.io: EU-Made; Timetastic: UK / wider Europe. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
absence.io carries the higher mean on pricing transparency (7.0 vs 6.0, six judges lean absence.io), sovereignty (6.3 vs 3.2, six lean absence.io), sick leave and eAU (3.0 vs 0.7, six lean absence.io), payroll handover (5.0 vs 4.7, two lean absence.io, four tie) and leave policies (3.2 vs 2.8, one lean absence.io, five tie). Timetastic carries the higher mean on absence data protection (4.0 vs 2.5, five judges lean Timetastic) and requests and approvals (5.0 vs 4.5, three lean Timetastic). The weighted totals split by judge: the data protection officer, integrator and skeptic score absence.io higher (4.6 vs 3.6, 4.6 vs 4, 4.4 vs 4.1), while the team lead and payroll accountant score Timetastic higher (4.1 vs 4.3, 4.2 vs 4.4). Sovereignty attributes list absence.io's data residency as EU only and Timetastic's as unknown. With the lean differing by judge and by criterion, this head-to-head declares no winner.
Choose absence.io if
You must run German sick-leave and eAU processes: six judges lean absence.io on sick leave and eAU (3.0 vs 0.7), and most judges recorded no rating for Timetastic, finding no public information on sick notifications, certificates or the six-week continued-pay count.
You need full prices before you commit: six judges lean absence.io on pricing transparency (7.0 vs 6.0) — Starter 2,99€, Pro 4,99€ and Complete 7,99€ per user per month, net, with a 10% annual discount and monthly cancellation.
Your payroll runs through DATEV: absence.io leads payroll handover 5.0 to 4.7, two judges leaning its way, scored on a DATEV connection covering expenses and travel cost reports.
You require EU-only data residency: absence.io's data residency is listed as EU only, six judges lean absence.io on sovereignty (6.3 vs 3.2), and hosting is stated exclusively on ISO-certified servers in Germany.
Your buying panel is led by a data protection officer, integrator or skeptic: their weighted totals favor absence.io (4.6 vs 3.6, 4.6 vs 4, 4.4 vs 4.1).
Choose Timetastic if
Absence data protection is your gate: five judges lean Timetastic (4.0 vs 2.5), while absence.io's judges split 2 to 4 there, with lower scores citing no public information on who may see a sickness reason or access logging.
Your team approves time off from phones and chat tools: three judges lean Timetastic on requests and approvals (5.0 vs 4.5), scored on mobile approvals, a shared calendar and Slack and Teams updates.
Your contracts run under English law: Timetastic's legal entity jurisdiction is GB, an EU data representative is named, and English law governs.
Your buying panel mirrors the team lead and payroll accountant: their weighted totals favor Timetastic (4.1 vs 4.3 and 4.2 vs 4.4).
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Protection Officer
Treats every sick day as special-category data, because the law does. Asks who can see a reason or a certificate, how long absence records are kept and deleted, whether access is logged, where the data is hosted, and which subprocessors send the push notification that says someone is ill.
absence.io
This judge's pick
Timetastic
Criterion by criterion
Entitlements & German leave rules
absence.io
The captured pages show a leave planner with requests and approvals, a real-time team calendar and always up-to-date remaining leave, plus absence categories including parental leave, special leave and additional days for company tenure. I found no public information on part-time proration, holidays per German federal state, carry-over expiry with automatic notices, or half-day and hourly leave.
Timetastic
The pricing and feature pages show holiday allowance records and approvals plus configurable leave types ("Book, track and record all types of absence"), which is annual entitlements with remaining balances and custom types. We found no public information on part-time proration, public holidays per German federal state or Austrian region, carry-over expiry with automatic notices, or half-day and hourly leave.
Requests, approvals & team calendar
absence.io
Requests and approvals run in native iOS and Android apps and even directly in Slack and Microsoft Teams through a bot, with a real-time team calendar, personal sync to Google and Outlook plus ICS subscription links, and a daily broadcast of current absences. I found no public information on multi-level approval chains, named substitutes, minimum staffing rules, or calendar visibility that hides an absence reason.
Timetastic
Leave requests and approvals run from a mobile app, bookings feed automatically into a regular calendar, and daily or weekly email reports plus Slack and Teams updates broadcast who is off. We found no public information on multi-level approval chains, named substitutes or calendar visibility that hides an absence reason, and staffing blackout rules appear only as "coming soon".
Sick leave, eAU & continued pay
absence.io
Sickness days are recorded as their own category with a distinction between days with and without a certificate of incapacity, and a child needing care is listed as its own categorisation — health data the vendor openly declares processing. I found no public information on eAU retrieval from the statutory health insurers, counting of sick days towards the six-week continued-pay limit, or BEM thresholds.
Timetastic
The captured pages describe leave types generically — "Book, track and record all types of absence" — and we found no public information on sickness as a regulated process: certificate upload by the employee, eAU retrieval in any form, counting towards the six-week continued-pay limit, or child-sick days. A sick day is special-category data in law, and we found no public information on who may see a sickness reason or certificate.
Payroll handover, time tracking & API
absence.io
The integrations page states a direct DATEV connection for expenses and travel cost reports, while absences and time tracking can be exported at any time into DATEV or other accounting systems through the open REST API (version 2, JSON, OAuth 2.0 and Hawk), and time tracking with exports sits in the Pro plan. I found no public information on absence types mapped to payroll codes, a monthly closing that locks past periods, or webhook limits.
Timetastic
Sage 50 and QuickBooks are named integrations, the pricing page lists a payroll data export and payroll-ready timesheets, an API appears in the feature list, and the Rota and Time Clock module handles both leave requests and time clocking. We found no public information on absence types mapped to payroll codes, a monthly period lock, or published API limits and webhooks.
Health data, access & works council
absence.io
The privacy notices list sickness days with certificate categorisation as processed data, offer an Auftragsdatenverarbeitung agreement, name a data protection officer and the Bavarian supervisory authority, and state deletion once the purpose ends alongside legal retention of up to ten years. I found no public information on who may see a sickness reason or certificate, whether access to such records is logged, or documentation aimed at a works council or works agreement.
Timetastic
Four preset access levels, customisable roles and permissions and a "need to know" access rule govern absence data, a data processing agreement is offered, and cancellation deletes data from live servers immediately with backups cleared within 10 to 14 days — though six years of retention for accounting and legal purposes follows account closure. We found no public information on sickness reasons or certificates restricted to named roles, on logged access to health-related records (a bare "Record of changes" line does not establish that), or on documentation for a works agreement; the "Burnout board" and "absence trends and insights" features run analytics over absence data with no stated exclusion for sickness.
European sovereignty
absence.io
Hosting is stated repeatedly as exclusively on ISO-certified servers in Germany, the contracting entity is absence.io GmbH in Munich with a Munich commercial register number, and Softgarden GmbH is named as sole owner.
Timetastic
The contracting entity is Timetastic Limited of Wilmslow, England, governed by English law with the Information Commissioner's Office as supervisory authority, so the entity sits outside the EU, while a privacy policy and data processing agreement are offered, an EU data representative is named and outside-EEA transfers rely on adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses. We found no public information on where absence and sickness data is hosted, and although a processor list is published, we found no public information on those processors' locations.
Pricing transparency
absence.io
All three tiers are public — Starter 2,99€, Pro 4,99€ and Complete 7,99€ pro Nutzer pro Monat, net, monthly cancellable with no minimum term and "Jährlich -10%" — and the pages state which tier carries time tracking and single sign-on (Pro) and the API (Complete). eAU does not appear in any plan, and I found no public information on a minimum user count or setup fees.
Timetastic
Every tier is priced publicly with its basis and period — Business $1.50 per user per month, Pro $2.50 per user per month, Rota & Time Clock $5.50 per user per month, billed monthly after a one-month free trial with no card required — and the tier pages state which features sit where, including time tracking and payroll export. We found no public information on VAT treatment of the listed prices or on add-on and setup fees, so the annual invoice is not fully computable from public pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
absence.io
Timetastic
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
Not determined
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 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick absence.io and 2 pick Timetastic. 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 absence.io or Timetastic European?
absence.io is European (EU-Made). Timetastic is European (UK / wider Europe). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do absence.io and Timetastic store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — absence.io: Default not stated; pages mention Germany. Timetastic: its pages as captured do not say.