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 Managing Director
Runs a forty-person company in two federal states without an HR department and is liable when leave is calculated wrong. Wants part-time entitlements prorated correctly, the right public holidays per site, carry-over that lapses only after employees were told, and the eAU handled without a phone call to every health insurer.
absence.io
This judge's pick
Timetastic
Criterion by criterion
Entitlements & German leave rules
absence.io
Requests, approvals and always-current remaining leave are documented, and the privacy notices list holiday, parental leave, transfer periods, extra days for company tenure or special leave, and sick days as stored absence data — entitlements and balances clearly live in the product. We found no public information on proration for part-time working days or joiners and leavers, on public holidays per federal state, or on carry-over expiry with automatic notice before leave lapses, which is precisely the liability I carry.
Timetastic
The pricing page promises 'holiday allowance records and approvals' and the leave-types page says it books and records 'all types of absence', so annual entitlements, balances and custom absence categories are clearly the product's core. We found no public information on part-time proration, joiner and leaver adjustments, public holidays by German federal state, or carry-over with expiry notices. As the person liable when leave is calculated wrong, none of the rules I must get right is documented anywhere I read.
Requests, approvals & team calendar
absence.io
The everyday flow is there: leave requests approved with a few clicks, a real-time team calendar, approvals handled directly in Slack or Microsoft Teams with a daily broadcast of current absences, and personal sync with Google or Outlook plus subscription links per team, department, location or the whole company, reachable from native iOS and Android apps. We found no public information on approvers configured per team or department, on email or push notifications for requests, or on substitutes, minimum-staffing rules and delegation while an approver is away.
Timetastic
Requests, approvals, a shared calendar and mobile and desktop apps are all on the pricing page, bookings feed into 'your regular calendar', and Slack and Teams carry a daily update of who is off. Email reports arrive daily or weekly. The two staffing protections I would want, 'Locked dates' and 'Maximum absent', are both marked 'Coming soon' on the pricing page, so I could not count on them today.
Sick leave, eAU & continued pay
absence.io
Sick days are their own recorded type, and the privacy notices show they are stored categorised by whether a certificate of incapacity exists and separately for a child needing care. We found no public information on eAU retrieval from the statutory health insurers, on counting sick days towards the six-week continued-pay limit, or on BEM thresholds — the parts that decide whether my office must phone every health insurer.
Timetastic
The most the captured pages show is that it records 'all types of absence' with configurable leave types, into which a sickness category would presumably fall. We found no public information on employee sick notification with certificates, eAU retrieval from health insurers, counting towards the six-week continued-pay limit, or child-sick days. I would still be on the phone to every health insurer.
Payroll handover, time tracking & API
absence.io
DATEV is named, but the direct connection is scoped to expenses and travel cost reports; absences and time tracking are to be exported and connected to DATEV or other accounting systems through the open REST API v2 (JSON, OAuth 2.0 and Hawk authentication) that exposes absences, users, remaining leave, departments and locations, with the API key generated in the profile and the API part of the Complete plan. Time tracking with overtime balances is in the product from the Pro plan, so absences and working time sit in one system; we found no public information on mapping absence types to payroll codes, a monthly closing lock, or webhooks.
Timetastic
The pricing page names Sage 50 and QuickBooks integrations and, in the Rota & Time Clock tier, 'payroll-ready timesheets' and a 'Payroll data export', and an API appears in the feature list. We found no public information on DATEV or any other German payroll system, mapping absence types to payroll codes, or locking past periods. That reads as an accounting-package export, not the payroll handover my office needs.
Health data, access & works council
absence.io
A data processing agreement is offered, personal data are deleted once the purpose of storage ends with statutory retention of up to ten years, and the privacy notices openly list sick days, the with-or-without-certificate categorisation and sick-child data among processed categories. Apart from the request-and-approval flow implying employee and approver roles, we found no public information on restricting sickness reasons or certificates to named roles, on logged access to health-related records, or on documentation aimed at a works agreement.
Timetastic
There are four preset access levels with customisable management roles and permissions, a data processing agreement is offered, and retention is concrete: support conversations auto-delete after twelve months, account data is deleted on cancellation, and only six-year accounting records are kept. We found no public information on restricting sickness reasons or certificates to named roles, logged access to health-related records, or documentation for a works agreement. The questions my works council would ask first are exactly the ones I could not answer.
European sovereignty
absence.io
The captured pages establish the German core: absence.io GmbH with a Munich commercial register number and German VAT ID, Softgarden GmbH as sole owner, servers exclusively in Germany and ISO-certified, a Munich data protection officer, the Bavarian supervisory authority named, and an online subcontractor list referenced. We found no public information naming the hosting infrastructure or giving per-subprocessor locations, and no data processing agreement text shown that treats sickness data as special-category processing. The privacy notices name Google LLC in the USA as a recipient of personal data, which is why I stop short of the top band.
Timetastic
The contracting entity is Timetastic Limited of Wilmslow, England, under the laws of England and Wales, and the privacy policy publishes a processor list, discloses transfers outside the EEA under adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses, and names an EU data representative for EU residents. A data processing agreement is offered. We found no public information on where absence data is actually hosted, so I cannot tell my data protection officer where it would sit.
Pricing transparency
absence.io
Nearly computable: all three tiers are public — Starter 2,99€, Pro 4,99€, Complete 7,99€ per user per month — stated as net, with a 10% annual discount, monthly cancellation and no minimum term, automatic billing of new users, and tier placement for time tracking (Pro), single sign-on (Pro), the API and expenses (Complete). We found no public information on a minimum user count, or on which tier, if any, includes eAU retrieval or a payroll export.
Timetastic
Every plan is priced publicly on a per-user, per-month basis — Business $1.50 per user per month, Pro $2.50 per user per month, Rota & Time Clock $5.50 per user per month — with monthly billing, instant self-service cancellation and a free month with no card required, and the pricing page states which features sit in which plan, including time tracking and the payroll data export in Rota & Time Clock. The captured pages give different names for the entry-level plan, 'Business' on pricing and 'Basic' on the calendar connections page. We found no public information on minimum users or VAT treatment, and no refunds are available.
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.