In the computed table, HRworks leads payroll readiness (5.5 vs 3.7; six judges lean HRworks, none Personalwolke), recruiting and onboarding (4.3 vs 0.0; six to none), employee data governance (4.5 vs 3.0; six to none), sovereignty (5.7 vs 4.0; six to none) and core HR records (4.0 vs 3.2; five to none, one tie). Time and absence is the most contested: 6.2 vs 5.7, two judges leaning HRworks and four tying. Personalwolke's lead is pricing transparency (1.7 vs 0.5; four judges lean Personalwolke, two tie): published prices exist for Personalwolke, while HRworks publishes no prices and pricing was not weighted in HRworks's verdicts. Per-judge weighted totals favor HRworks, from The IT Integrator's 4.8 vs 2.6 to The Payroll Officer's 5.6 vs 3.5. Both list EU-only data residency and US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure; HRworks's legal entity jurisdiction is DE, Personalwolke's is AT. We found no published verdict summary for Personalwolke.
Choose HRworks if
You run payroll through DATEV and want a partner interface — six judges lean HRworks on payroll readiness (5.5 vs 3.7), and its verdict names DATEV as a partner.
You need recruiting and onboarding inside the same HR suite — six judges lean HRworks on recruiting and onboarding (4.3 vs 0.0).
Your data protection officer prioritizes employee data governance — six judges lean HRworks (4.5 vs 3.0).
You require a German legal entity — HRworks's legal entity jurisdiction is DE, and six judges lean HRworks on sovereignty (5.7 vs 4.0).
You need smartphone time capture with breaks, overtime and minus hours — HRworks's verdict evidences these, and time and absence stands at 6.2 vs 5.7 (two lean HRworks, four tie).
Choose Personalwolke if
You need published prices before talking to sales — four judges lean Personalwolke on pricing transparency (1.7 vs 0.5), and published prices exist for Personalwolke.
You require an Austrian legal entity — Personalwolke's legal entity jurisdiction is AT.
Time and absence is your main requirement and you would let price decide a tie — four judges tie the two there (5.7 vs 6.2), and Personalwolke holds the pricing transparency lean.
You want EU-only data residency together with published prices — Personalwolke lists data residency as EU-only and publishes prices.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Protection Officer
Answers for the most sensitive personal data the company holds, about people who cannot decline the processing. Wants retention that executes rather than promises, a published subprocessor list, and applicant data that deletes itself on the stated date. Treats an unpublished DPA as a finding.
HRworks
This judge's pick
Personalwolke
Criterion by criterion
Digital personnel file & data model
HRworks
A digital personnel file "enthält sämtliche Personaldaten und Dokumente" with configurable roles and need-to-know access exists, but nothing evidences effective-dated contract or salary history, org structure across entities, custom fields, or retention per document type. The record is marketed well; the audit trail beneath it is undocumented.
Personalwolke
A digitale Personalakte, Personalverwaltung and a digital payslip/reporting feature are confirmed, but the evidence is silent on org structure, custom fields, effective-dated change history and field-level permissions — I cannot verify whether a contract or salary change overwrites what was there. Excel/PDF export exists but nothing shows the export reproduces the record intact.
Payroll handoff
HRworks
A named DATEV integration ("Corporate und Schnittstellen Partner") plus ADDISON and a Payroll module in the base package clears the named-integration bar, which is why this is not a 3. But the evidence documents nothing on variable pay, mid-month joiners and leavers, a pre-payroll check, or retro-accounting — rubric level 8 territory is entirely unevidenced.
Personalwolke
A 'Schnittstelle Lohn/Gehalt' is offered as an option and 'vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung' plus 'Lohnverrechnungsanbindung' are claimed, but no payroll system is named, no format is documented, and there is nothing on mid-month joiners/leavers or a pre-payroll check. That is a re-typing risk dressed as a handoff.
Absence & working-time
HRworks
Working-time capture on terminal and smartphone with breaks, overtime and minus-hour accounts, monthly overviews, automated reports, and vacation/sickness handling sits above rubric level 5, and there is a claimed "EuGH- und DSGVO-konform" documentation. But no public-holiday calendars per location, no rest-period rule configuration, no labour-inspection-ready export, and no tamper-evidence are evidenced — for a legal recording duty I need more than a compliance slogan.
Personalwolke
Working-time capture via start/stop, web/app and terminals is real, and Urlaubsaliquotierung for entry, part-time, exit and Karenz plus 'komplexe Zeitwirtschaft inkl. Berechnung' gives genuine depth. But nothing documents the ArbZG recording duty, tamper-evident records, holiday calendars, overtime accounts or works-council-configurable limits — the compliance posture around the recorded data is unevidenced.
Recruiting & onboarding
HRworks
Applicant management "von A bis Z", a branded jobs portal, and onboarding document collection cover both halves of the join path, with "Employee Life Cycle in einer Software" hinting at continuity. Structured stages, rejection handling and no-re-entry handover are asserted rather than evidenced, and there is not one word on applicant retention or automated deletion at a stated deadline — the first thing I look for in recruiting data.
Personalwolke
The module list is Time, Travel, Project Time and HR-Expert; nothing evidences applicant tracking or onboarding, and therefore nothing on the automated applicant deletion at a stated deadline my office requires. Silence on the join path is a finding, not a neutral.
Employee data protection & co-determination
HRworks
The AVV and TOM must be requested ("anfordern") rather than published and signable — that is a finding in my book, and it caps this score. Roles are genuinely configurable with need-to-know access, ISO 27001 certification and a Bitkom GDPR audit back the security layer, but no retention period is stated, no deletion is shown to execute, the audit log records inputs and logins rather than who read what, and no subprocessor list appears anywhere.
Personalwolke
The DPA exists only 'auf Anfrage' — an unpublished DPA is a finding by my standard — and the evidence shows no retention periods, no executable deletion, no role model beyond none stated, no audit log of who read what; only SSL transmission and 2FA as technical basics. That the vendor's own site runs Hotjar for behavioural analysis does not encourage me about analytics habits.
European sovereignty
HRworks
The imprint evidences a German contracting entity (HRworks GmbH, HRB Freiburg 5406) with German seat and jurisdiction, EU server location, and a named data-centre provider in AWS — a real sovereign footing, whatever the pipeline's capture failed to confirm. What keeps this from rubric level 8 is the absence of a published subprocessor list and any naming of non-EU processing with its legal basis.
Personalwolke
The server stands in Austria within the EU and the imprint names an Austrian Firmenbuch entity, but that entity (Workflow HR Systems GmbH) does not match the vendor of record (Workflow EDV GmbH), leaving the contracting party unclear. More importantly, no product subprocessor list is published at all — I cannot tell whose hands the data passes through, and website analytics tools are the only processors named.
Pricing transparency
HRworks
Two captures of the pricing page show no numbers whatsoever — "Erhalten Sie Ihr passendes Angebot" — so every tier is a sales conversation. The slogan "Transparente Preise ohne Mindestlaufzeiten" is a claim, not a computable invoice; this is the anchor-0 case almost verbatim.
Personalwolke
The model is public — monthly rent based on employee count and modules, 30-day free trial, an acknowledged one-time setup fee and multi-module discounts — but not a single euro figure for any tier, module, setup fee or minimum appears. An HR lead cannot compute even a rough annual invoice from these pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
HRworks
Personalwolke
Legal entity
Not determined
Incorporated in AT
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
EU only
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
EU only
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.