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 IT Integrator
Owns identity and has to make the HR system the source of truth for accounts. Wants SCIM provisioning, SSO that is not an enterprise upsell, and an API with documentation rather than a partner form. Judges onboarding by whether it can create the account, not by whether it has a checklist.
HRworks
This judge's pick
Personalwolke
Criterion by criterion
Digital personnel file & data model
HRworks
A real digital personnel file with role-based permissions and logged inputs is confirmed, plus legal templates like Entgelttransparenz handled in-software — but the evidence is silent on org chart, custom fields, and dated contract/salary history, which is what makes a system of record rather than a document store. Absence of that evidence keeps me below the 5 anchor.
Personalwolke
A 'Digitale Personalakte' with Personalverwaltung and Excel/PDF export is confirmed, but the evidence is silent on org structure, custom fields, dated contract/salary history, e-signature and field-level permissions — that is a flat file, not a system of record. And since the only data access on evidence is a webservice sold as an optional add-on, I have no way to treat this file as the identity source my systems sync from.
Payroll handoff
HRworks
Payroll is an in-suite module and DATEV interface partnership is claimed ('DATEV Corporate und Schnittstellen Partner') with ADDISON also named, which clears the named-integration bar. But nothing documents what the interface carries — no pre-payroll check, no mid-month joiner/leaver handling, no approval or lock step — so it sits between the 5 and 8 anchors.
Personalwolke
A 'Schnittstelle Lohn/Gehalt' exists as an optional module and the site claims 'vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung' plus a travel-expense payroll hookup, but no payroll system is named, no export format is documented, and mid-month joiners/leavers and pre-payroll checks are absent. I can't wire a month-end handoff on an interface that has a name and nothing else.
Absence & working-time
HRworks
Working-time capture is well evidenced — terminal and smartphone capture, breaks, overtime and minus hours, target vs actual, monthly overviews — and automatic EuGH/GDPR-conform documentation is at least claimed, which speaks to the recording duty. What's missing: public-holiday calendars, pro-rata entitlement, carry-over, rest-period rules, or any export I could hand a labour inspection.
Personalwolke
Working-time capture is real — start/stop in Base, complex time calculation and terminals in Professional, web and app — and vacation runs in days and hours with pro-rating for entry, part-time, exit and parental leave. But nothing evidences sickness recording, carry-over, per-location holiday calendars, rest-period rules or tamper-evidence, so the German recording duty side of it is a claim, not a documented capability.
Recruiting & onboarding
HRworks
Applicant management 'von A bis Z' with a branded jobs portal and an onboarding flow for collecting new-hire documents exist, and the lifecycle-in-one-suite claim suggests the handover. But no structured stages, rejection handling, e-signature, or applicant retention/deletion are evidenced — and the thing I look for, onboarding triggering IT or provisioning an account, appears nowhere.
Personalwolke
The complete feature inventory contains no vacancy, applicant-tracking, contract or onboarding capability of any kind — hiring lives in a shared inbox. And nothing here provisions the day-one account, no SCIM, no task trigger into IT, which for me is the entire measure of onboarding.
Employee data protection & co-determination
HRworks
An independent Bitkom GDPR audit, ISO 27001, configurable roles on a need-to-know principle, and logged inputs and logins are genuinely strong signals. But the DPA is only available on request rather than published, no retention periods are stated, executable deletion isn't evidenced, and there's no read-level audit — a works council will ask for exactly those three.
Personalwolke
The only governance artifact is a substantive DPA available on request specifying processing and the TOMs, backed by SSL transport and Google-Authenticator 2FA — no role model beyond unstated, no retention periods, no deletion execution, no audit log of who read what. No SSO/SAML or SCIM is evidenced anywhere, and the GDPR-conformance line is a sticker, not documentation.
European sovereignty
HRworks
What holds it at 5 is the unpublished subprocessor list — beyond AWS, the chain is unknown, and no data-centre certifications are given.
Personalwolke
Hosting is stated as Austria, EU, and the imprint is an Austrian GmbH with Firmenbuch number and UID, which I genuinely weigh. But no data-centre or product subprocessor is named — the published list covers only the marketing site's Hotjar and Matomo — and the vendor record says 'Workflow EDV GmbH' while the imprint says 'Workflow HR Systems GmbH', so I cannot even confirm who I would be contracting with. Missing evidence here is information, not a pass.
Pricing transparency
HRworks
The pricing page is a quote form — 'Erhalten Sie Ihr passendes Angebot' — and even the Pro package is described with features but no number. No per-employee price exists anywhere in the capture, so no HR lead can compute any invoice from public pages; the 'ohne Mindestlaufzeiten' line discloses a term, not a price.
Personalwolke
The pricing page discloses the shape of the invoice — module- and user-based monthly rent, a one-time setup fee, term and multi-module discounts, a 30-day trial — but not one euro figure survives into the evidence, and the API itself is an 'optional' line item with no price. An HR lead cannot compute the annual invoice from these pages; they can only start a sales conversation.
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.