As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates absence.io 2/5 and Urlaubsverwaltung 2.5/5 in Absence Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick absence.io and 6 pick Urlaubsverwaltung. absence.io scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (Payroll handover, time tracking & API). Urlaubsverwaltung scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Health data, access & works council, Sick leave, eAU & continued pay, European sovereignty, plus 3 more). Provenance — absence.io: EU-Made; Urlaubsverwaltung: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The bench splits along one line. Absence.io takes payroll handover at 5.0 to 3.7, with 6 judges leaning its way and 0 leaning Urlaubsverwaltung — its DATEV connection covers expenses and travel cost reports. Urlaubsverwaltung leads absence data protection 6.0 to 2.5 and sick leave and eAU 5.0 to 3.0, 6 judges leaning its way on each, citing sickness stored without the medical reason. It also leads sovereignty 7.3 to 6.3 and pricing transparency 7.8 to 7.0 — each 5 leans, 1 tie — plus leave policies 4.0 to 3.2. Requests and approvals genuinely split: 1 lean absence.io, 2 lean Urlaubsverwaltung, 3 ties. The five weighted totals listed each favor Urlaubsverwaltung, from 4.6 vs 4.1 to 6 vs 4.6 — yet payroll handover stands 6 to 0 for absence.io. Both list EU only data residency and US CLOUD Act reach subprocessor exposure; absence.io's legal entity jurisdiction is DE, Urlaubsverwaltung's is unknown.
Choose absence.io if
You hand payroll to DATEV — absence.io leads payroll handover 5.0 to 3.7 with 6 judges leaning its way, and its documented DATEV connection covers expenses and travel cost reports.
Your team builds custom integrations — absences and time tracking export over the open REST API (v2, OAuth 2.0 and Hawk).
You need the vendor's legal entity jurisdiction stated — absence.io lists DE, while Urlaubsverwaltung's jurisdiction is listed as unknown.
You run fewer than five active users — Urlaubsverwaltung's published pricing sets a minimum of five active users and a 10,00 € monthly minimum (plus VAT), while absence.io publishes monthly cancellation with no minimum term.
Choose Urlaubsverwaltung if
You weigh absence data protection most — Urlaubsverwaltung leads 6.0 to 2.5 with 6 judges leaning its way; sickness is stored without the medical reason and visibility is role-dependent.
Your team needs sick leave and continued pay handled — sick leave and eAU runs 5.0 to 3.0 with 6 judges leaning Urlaubsverwaltung, and the data protection judge credits a six-week continued-pay reminder.
You need documented leave policies — Urlaubsverwaltung leads 4.0 to 3.2, with 5 judges leaning its way and 1 tie.
Subprocessor documentation matters to your review — sovereignty runs 7.3 to 6.3 (5 leans, 1 tie), with hosting in Hetzner's ISO 27001 certified datacentre in Germany and a published subprocessor list.
Your payroll accountant weighs the whole rubric, not just handover — their weighted total is 5.1 for Urlaubsverwaltung versus 4.2 for absence.io.
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
Urlaubsverwaltung
This judge's pick
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Public holidays are handled properly per person: the country and German federal state are configurable, each employee can override the rule in their own account, even the Augsburger Friedensfest is included, and custom absence types plus half-day treatment of Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are documented. We found no public information on part-time proration, carry-over with expiry dates, or entitlement change logs, which German contracts and the BAG notice requirement usually demand.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Employees request absences from the mobile apps, privileged roles such as department heads and release-responsible users are named, and the calendar is well governed: department sharing shows each person only the absences they have a legitimate interest in, the company-wide calendar is off by default and reserved for special roles, and the iCal feeds work with Outlook and Google Calendar. We found no public information on multi-level approval chains, named substitutes, or a logged history of each approval.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Sickness is treated as its own process: employees can submit their own sick notification, child sickness is a separate type, the AU certificate period is recorded, and the tool reminds both the employee and Office-role users when a contiguous illness exceeds six weeks of continued pay. We found no public information on eAU retrieval from the health insurers or BEM thresholds, and sick days falling inside booked leave must be corrected manually.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
A CSV export usable in Excel and per-employee report downloads exist, absences synchronise automatically into the vendor's own time-tracking module, and time entries can be locked with a change history. We found no public information on integrations with named payroll systems such as DATEV, on mapping absence types to payroll codes, or on a documented API.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
The vendor states that sick notifications are stored without the reason, that absence-reason visibility is role-dependent, and that the company-wide calendar is disabled by default; the processing agreement is public, a data protection impact assessment process is described, deletion on request with automated deletion processes is documented, and calendar visibility follows a sliding window with regenerable links. We found no public information on access logging for individual health records, retention periods per record type, or material aimed at a works agreement.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Hosting sits in Hetzner's ISO 27001-certified datacentre in Germany, the contracting entity is Focus Shift Software GmbH of Karlsruhe registered at the Mannheim court, and a published subprocessor list names Hetzner and MailJet in Germany and Microsoft through its Irish entity, each with an agreement version, alongside a public processing agreement. Ownership is not established on the captured pages and the optional Gravatar service of the US provider Automattic receives only the e-mail address, so the picture is strongly European but not documented end to end.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
The price is public and stated precisely: 2,00 € (zzgl. MwSt.) per active user per month, a minimum of five active users with a 10,00 € monthly minimum, the time-tracking add-on at 2,00 € per employee per month, a 10 % Rabatt for annual payment, and both monthly and annual cancellation terms. Above 250 employees the price becomes an individual offer, which keeps the annual invoice from being computable for every headcount.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
absence.io
Urlaubsverwaltung
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 Urlaubsverwaltung higher: 2.5/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick absence.io and 6 pick Urlaubsverwaltung. 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 Urlaubsverwaltung European?
absence.io is European (EU-Made). Urlaubsverwaltung is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do absence.io and Urlaubsverwaltung store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — absence.io: Default not stated; pages mention Germany. Urlaubsverwaltung: Default not stated; pages mention Germany.