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 HR IT Integrator
Wires the absence tool to payroll, time tracking, the identity provider and the calendar. Wants a documented API and webhooks, maintained connectors for the named German payroll systems rather than a CSV, SSO, and balances that agree with the time-tracking system on both sides.
absence.io
This judge's pick
Timetastic
Criterion by criterion
Entitlements & German leave rules
absence.io
The leave planner is the product's root since 2014, with remaining-leave balances kept current, additional days for tenure and special leave, and parental leave recorded as an absence category. We found no public information on part-time proration, public holidays per German federal state, carry-over expiry or half-day and hourly leave.
Timetastic
Holiday allowance records with approvals and configurable leave types ("Book, track and record all types of absence", "Booking limits by leave type") are documented, which is basic entitlement-and-balance territory. We found no public information on holiday calendars per German federal state, part-time proration, carry-over with expiry and notice, half days or hourly leave, so I cannot credit it beyond that.
Requests, approvals & team calendar
absence.io
Leave requests with approval and a real-time team calendar are documented, native iOS and Android apps exist, and calendars sync with Google and Outlook through ICS links while requests can be approved directly in Slack and Microsoft Teams chats. We found no public information on multi-level approval chains, named substitutes, staffing rules, delegation, or calendar visibility settings that hide the absence reason.
Timetastic
Requests and approvals, a shared calendar of who's off, a mobile and desktop app, Slack and Teams integrations, daily and weekly email reports, and calendar connections that "automatically feed" absence bookings into your regular calendar are all documented. We found no public information on approvers configured per team, multi-level chains or named substitutes, and the staffing guards ("Locked dates", "Maximum absent") are marked "Coming soon" on the pricing page.
Sick leave, eAU & continued pay
absence.io
Sick days are recorded as their own category with a with-or-without-certificate flag and a categorisation for a care-needing child. We found no public information on eAU retrieval from the statutory health insurers, counting sick days towards the six-week continued-pay limit, or BEM thresholds.
Timetastic
We found no public information on sick leave as its own absence type, employee sick notification in the app, eAU retrieval from statutory insurers or counting towards the six-week continued-pay limit. The homepage, pricing, leave-types and calendar-connections pages I read describe configurable generic absence types only, with nothing bearing on the regulated sick-leave process.
Payroll handover, time tracking & API
absence.io
The direct DATEV connection covers expenses and travel cost reports only; absences and time tracking must be exported and connected to DATEV or other accounting systems individually over the open REST API v2 (JSON, OAuth 2.0 and Hawk, access to absences, users and remaining leave). Time tracking sits in the same product from the Pro plan, so absence and overtime balances live in one system — but we found no public information on webhooks, payroll-code mapping, monthly period locks or published API limits.
Timetastic
The pricing page names Sage 50 and QuickBooks among integrations, the time-and-attendance list includes "Payroll data export" and "payroll-ready timesheets", time tracking sits in the Rota & Time Clock plan, and an API is offered. But I found no public information on connectors for DATEV or the other payroll systems German companies run, on webhooks, or on published API documentation with limits — and the calendar side of the Rota and Time Clock plan "only syncs with iCal" — so for a German payroll run this stays an export-first story.
Health data, access & works council
absence.io
A data processing agreement is offered, and the privacy notices publish deletion when the purpose ends, seven-day log deletion and retention of up to ten years for statutory duties. We found no public information on role-based visibility of sickness reasons or certificates, logged access to health-related records, retention rules per record type, or documentation aimed at works councils.
Timetastic
Four preset access levels, customisable management roles and permissions, SSO and MFA are documented, a data processing agreement is offered, and need-to-know access with confidentiality undertakings is stated; retention is concrete too (support conversations auto-deleted at 12 months, backups cleared 10 to 14 days after cancellation, six years kept for accounting and legal only). We found no public information on sickness reasons restricted to named roles, access logging on health-related records, or documentation aimed at a works council.
European sovereignty
absence.io
Hosting is stated to be exclusively on ISO-certified servers in Germany, the contracting entity is absence.io GmbH in Munich registered at the Munich district court and solely owned by Softgarden GmbH, and a subcontractor list is published online with several processors named (Stripe, Google, Mailjet, Zendesk, UserLane, eKomi). We found no public information naming the hosting infrastructure provider or confirming that the data processing agreement covers sickness data as special-category processing; the website also discloses transfers to Google LLC in the USA.
Timetastic
The contracting entity is Timetastic Ltd of Kings Court, Wilmslow under the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, an EU Data Representative (Adam Brogdan) is named in the privacy policy, an up-to-date processor list is published, a DPA is offered and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is claimed on the pricing page. We found no public statement of where absence data is hosted and no locations for the published processors, so the data-residency picture stays open for a German buyer.
Pricing transparency
absence.io
All three tiers are priced publicly per user per month (Starter 2,99€, Pro 4,99€, Complete 7,99€) with net pricing stated, monthly cancellation and no minimum term, "Jährlich -10%", automatic billing of new users, and tier contents showing time tracking and single sign-on from Pro and the API in Complete. We found no public information on eAU retrieval, add-on or setup fees, or a minimum user count.
Timetastic
All three tiers are priced publicly on a per-user monthly basis — Business at "$1.50 per user per month", Pro at "$2.50 per user per month", Rota & Time Clock at "$5.50 per user per month" — with each tier's feature list on the same page, monthly billing, instant self-service cancellation and a free month with no card required. We found no public information on VAT treatment, minimum users or a minimum term, so the annual invoice is not fully computable from the public pages alone.
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.