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 Skeptic
Knows "eAU supported" can mean a photo upload, "DATEV integration" can mean a CSV, and "GDPR-compliant" can mean every manager sees every diagnosis-adjacent note. Reads for who actually retrieves the certificate, which leave rules are computed rather than typed in, and whether the carry-over expiry notice exists at all.
absence.io
Urlaubsverwaltung
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Entitlements & German leave rules
absence.io
Remaining-leave balances, tenure-based additional days, and special and parental leave appear as tracked types in the privacy notice's data-category list, and holiday planning has been the product's core since 2014. But we found no public information on public holidays per federal state, part-time proration, carry-over expiry or half-day and hourly leave, so I cannot put this above the basic-balance level.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Absence types are configurable (Erholungsurlaub, Fortbildung, Kur, Home-Office) and the holiday engine is genuinely German: country and Bundesland selectable, overridable per employee in their own account, Augsburger Friedensfest included, and Heiligabend/Silvester configurable as full, half or non-workday. We found no public information on entitlement proration for part-time staff or joiners and leavers, carry-over with an expiry date, or automatic notices to employees before leave lapses, so this stays short of the deeper leave-law modelling.
Requests, approvals & team calendar
absence.io
Requests with approval and a real-time team calendar are the documented core flow, approvals also run inside Slack and Teams, and calendars sync with Outlook and Google via ICS subscription links alongside native iOS and Android apps. We found no public information on configurable approver chains, substitutes, minimum-staffing rules, or what colleagues may see of an absence reason.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Employees request and view absences from mobile apps in the Apple and Google stores, and calendars are scoped — own, department ("Jeder sieht nur die Abwesenheiten, für die er ein berechtigtes Interesse hat"), company-wide only for special roles and disabled by default — with iCal feeds into Outlook and Google. We found no public information on multi-level approval chains, substitutes named on the request, staffing or blackout rules, or logged approvals; the native Google Calendar and Exchange sync is itself marked deprecated in version 4 and removed in version 5, leaving the iCal route.
Sick leave, eAU & continued pay
absence.io
Sick days are their own absence type, categorised with or without a certificate of incapacity, and care of a sick child appears as a category — that is genuinely tracked, not just holiday. We found no public information on eAU retrieval by the tool or any payroll route, on six-week continued-pay counting, or on BEM thresholds, and the mechanism by which a certificate reaches the record is not described.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Employees can submit their own sick notification, child sick days are their own type, the AU certificate period is recorded, and the tool reminds both the employee and Office-permission holders when one connected illness exceeds six weeks of continued pay — a real EFZG-relevant feature. We found no public information on eAU retrieval from the statutory insurers or any named payroll route, and sick days inside a booked vacation do not cancel the vacation automatically; the help pages describe manual steps instead.
Payroll handover, time tracking & API
absence.io
The integration page itself says the direct DATEV connection covers expenses and travel cost reports only, with absences and time tracking to be exported and connected individually via the open REST API — a named payroll system plus a documented API (v2, OAuth 2.0 and Hawk, with absence endpoints) is the honest level. Absence and time data sit in the same system; we found no public information on payroll-code mapping, monthly period locks or webhooks.
Urlaubsverwaltung
There is an "Export für z. B. Excel" and per-employee CSV downloads in the time-tracking reports, absences sync automatically into the vendor's own Zeiterfassung module with overtime syncing back, and time entries can be locked with a change history showing who changed what. We found no public information on DATEV or any other named payroll integration, mapping of absence types to payroll codes, or a documented API — the handover evidence ends at CSV.
Health data, access & works council
absence.io
A data processing agreement (AVV) is offered, a data protection officer and the Bavarian supervisory authority are named, and deletion-on-purpose-end plus defined retention windows are documented — solid paperwork. But this is health data in law (sick days with certificate status are listed as processed), and we found no public information on who inside a company may see a sickness reason, whether access is logged, or anything aimed at a works council.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Sickness is recorded "ohne Grund" — without the reason — by design, visibility is role-dependent, the company-wide calendar ships disabled, the data processing agreement is publicly viewable without request, and deletion on request plus automated deletion processes are documented. We found no public information on per-record access logging, retention rules per record type, or documentation aimed at a works council; and the vendor itself warns that anyone holding a calendar's secret iCal link has access to it, which buyers should weigh.
European sovereignty
absence.io
A German GmbH registered at the Munich commercial court, sole owner Softgarden GmbH, servers exclusively in Germany with daily backups, and a data processing agreement offered — the anchor-five picture is proven, and a subcontractor list is stated to be published on a page we did not capture in full. It stops short of the next level: we found no public information on the named hosting infrastructure or a specified ISO standard, and marketing data does flow to Google LLC in the USA on standard contractual clauses.
Urlaubsverwaltung
The contracting entity is Focus Shift Software GmbH of Karlsruhe (HRB 737998, Mannheim), hosting is in Hetzner's ISO 27001-certified datacenter in Germany, and a subprocessor list with addresses is published — Hetzner in Gunzenhausen, MailJet in Berlin, Microsoft in Dublin — alongside a publicly available DPA. Ownership is not established on the captured pages, the only certification named is the datacenter's rather than the vendor's, and the US provider Gravatar appears as an optional service receiving only the e-mail address, which keeps this one step below the top of this level.
Pricing transparency
absence.io
All three tiers are public at per-user monthly prices, net, with a 10% annual discount, monthly cancellation and no minimum term, and the tier contents for time tracking, personnel file, SSO, API and travel expenses are stated, with all integrations included at no additional cost. A buyer can nearly compute the invoice; we found no public information on minimum user counts or any setup fee.
Urlaubsverwaltung
Nearly everything a buyer needs is public: "2,00 € (zzgl. MwSt.) pro Monat" per active user, a minimum of five active users with a monthly minimum of "10,00 € (zzgl. MwSt.)", "Jährliche Zahlung 10 % Rabatt", cancellation at 14 days monthly or one month before annual renewal in writing, a 30-day trial with no automatic conversion, and the time-tracking add-on at "+ 2,00 € pro Mitarbeitende" with VAT treatment stated throughout. Above 250 employees the price becomes an individual offer, and the two captures of the pricing page differ — the earlier shows the full price list, the later a redirect to focus-shift.de/preis.
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.