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 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
Urlaubsverwaltung
This judge's pick
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Public holidays are modelled per German federal state with a per-employee override and specials such as the Augsburger Friedensfest, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve can be set as half workdays, absence types are customisable, and flexible working-time models exist per employee. We found no public information on part-time or joiner and leaver proration, carry-over with expiry and lapse notices, or parental leave with its own rules.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Requests and approvals run from mobile apps in the Apple and Google stores, overtime entries trigger e-mail notifications to office-permission holders, and absence calendars share over iCal at own, department and company scope with company sharing gated by office permission and reason visibility role-dependent. The direct Google Calendar and Exchange integrations are marked deprecated in version 4 and set for removal in version 5, leaving iCal as the maintained path; we found no public information on multi-level approval chains, named substitutes, staffing rules or Teams and Slack integration.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Sick leave runs as its own type with self-submission by the employee in the app, child sick days as their own type, the AU certificate period captured, and an automatic reminder to the employee and office holders when a contiguous sick period exceeds six weeks of continued pay. We found no public information on eAU retrieval from the statutory insurers, whether directly or via a named payroll system, or on BEM flagging, and vacation overlapping a sick note must be cancelled manually.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
The payroll office gets an export 'für z. B. Excel' and per-employee CSV downloads from the reports, the vendor's own time-tracking module synchronises absences and overtime in both directions with the absence tool, time entries can be locked, and single sign-on is documented for Microsoft Entra, Okta, Auth0 and Google Workspace. We found no public information on maintained connectors for DATEV or other German payroll systems, on a documented API with published limits, on webhooks, or on payroll code mapping, so the handover to payroll rests on the CSV path.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Sickness records are kept without the reason of the illness, absence-reason visibility is role-dependent, and the company-wide calendar is disabled by default with department sharing limited to those with a legitimate interest; the data processing agreement is publicly available, data protection impact assessments under Article 35 GDPR are conducted, and deletion on request with automated deletion processes is documented. We found no public information on retention rules per record type for absence and sickness data, on access logging for health-related records specifically, or on documentation aimed at a works agreement.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
The vendor states hosting in the ISO 27001 certified Hetzner datacenter in Germany, the contracting entity is Focus Shift Software GmbH of Karlsruhe with a Mannheim commercial register number, and a subprocessor list with addresses and data processing agreements is published: Hetzner for hosting, MailJet in Berlin for e-mail, Microsoft in Ireland for communication, and an optional Gravatar service receiving only the e-mail address. Ownership is not established by the captured pages, and we found no public information on whether the data processing agreement covers sickness data as special-category processing.
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.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Every price is public: each active user costs '2,00 € (zzgl. MwSt.)' per month with a minimum of five active users and a monthly minimum of '10,00 € (zzgl. MwSt.)', time tracking is a listed add-on at '+ 2,00 € pro Mitarbeitende', annual payment carries '10 % Rabatt', and VAT treatment, cancellation terms, payment methods and prorated billing are stated. Above 250 employees the price becomes an individual offer, and the later capture of the pricing address redirects to focus-shift.de/preis/; we found no public information on setup fees.
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.