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 People Lead
Runs HR for 400 people with two colleagues and is replacing a shared drive and eleven spreadsheets. Optimizes for the record being true and the month closing without chasing anyone. Buys breadth that actually connects, and is unmoved by a beautiful org chart sitting next to a manual vacation calculation.
HRworks
This judge's pick
Personalwolke
Criterion by criterion
Digital personnel file & data model
HRworks
The digital personnel file holding all personnel data and documents, with configurable roles and need-to-know access, clears the 'flat file with documents' bar. But the evidence says nothing about an org chart, custom fields, or dated history of contract and salary changes — and without history the record isn't true, it's only current.
Personalwolke
A 'digitale Personalakte' with payslip storage, salary reporting and country standards is named, but nothing evidences an org chart, custom fields, or any dated history of contract or salary changes — and history is the whole point of replacing eleven spreadsheets. By the anchors, that silence pins this to the flat-file-with-documents level, not the structured-file level.
Payroll handoff
HRworks
DATEV and ADDISON are named partners, with 'Corporate und Schnittstellen Partner' status for DATEV, and Payroll is a core module customers actually run payroll on — that's a named integration for a major system. Nothing on mid-month joiners and leavers, variable pay, or a documented pre-payroll check, which is precisely what decides whether my month closes without chasing anyone.
Personalwolke
There is an optional 'Schnittstelle Lohn/Gehalt', 'vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung' in the Time module and a payroll connection from travel expenses, so a path exists — but no named payroll system, no documented format, and nothing on mid-month joiners/leavers or a pre-payroll check. That sits between the anonymous-export anchor and the named-integration anchor, and I won't gamble my December close on an unspecified interface.
Absence & working-time
HRworks
This is real working-time capture — stationary and smartphone, breaks, overtime and minus hours, monthly overview, explicitly replacing the time clock — with vacation and sickness handled and a vendor claim of EuGH/DSGVO-conform documentation. But automatic entitlement and carry-over, per-location holiday calendars, and tamper-evidence are unmentioned, and the ArbZG recording duty is never named, so I can't give it the legal-obligation credit.
Personalwolke
This is the product's spine: vacation aliquoting for entry, part-time, exit and Karenz, absence workflows and notifications, capture by web, app and terminal, and 'komplexe Zeitwirtschaft inkl. Berechnung' with hardware support. It falls short of the higher anchor because sickness recording, carry-over, per-location holiday calendars, break/overtime rules and anything inspection-ready or tamper-evident are entirely unevidenced.
Recruiting & onboarding
HRworks
Both halves exist: applicant management 'von A bis Z' with a careers portal in your own design, and onboarding document collection integrated in the one suite. But there's no evidence of structured stages, rejection handling, or the hired candidate flowing into an employee record without re-entry — so the handover between the two, my main interest, is asserted rather than shown.
Personalwolke
The published module list is Time, Travel, Project Time and HR-Expert — no applicant tracking, no onboarding, not even a checklist. Absence of the module in the evidence is the capability's absence; hiring stays in the shared inbox.
Employee data protection & co-determination
HRworks
An independent Bitkom GDPR audit, ISO 27001, AVV and TOM on request, need-to-know roles, and logged inputs and logins is more diligence than most vendors show. But retention periods and executable deletion appear nowhere, and logging logins is not an audit of who read what in the file — a works council will ask both questions before it says yes.
Personalwolke
A DPA is available on request, GDPR conformity is claimed, and SSL plus two-factor authentication are stated — but there is no evidenced role model, no retention periods, no deletion mechanics and no audit of who read what. That is exactly the DPA-on-request-with-the-rest-arranged-yourself anchor, and it would not survive a first conversation with a works council on the monitoring-heavy time module.
European sovereignty
HRworks
The imprint pins a German GmbH in Freiburg with HRB number and German jurisdiction, and the privacy page states EU server location on AWS — I know exactly who I'd be contracting with and where the data sits. The subprocessor list is not published and the region detail stops at 'EU', so the chain isn't fully traceable; I dock for that.
Personalwolke
The server is stated to sit in Austria within the EU and the imprint shows an Austrian GmbH with a Firmenbuch number, which is better than EU-as-an-option. But the only subprocessors named anywhere are website analytics (Hotjar, Matomo), the product's own processing chain is absent, and even the contracting jurisdiction was flagged as unconfirmed — a published chain is what I'd need to move above the middle.
Pricing transparency
HRworks
No numbers anywhere: the pricing page offers 'Ihr passendes Angebot' — every tier is a quote conversation, and the claim of 'transparente Preise ohne Mindestlaufzeiten' shows no price to be transparent about. With two colleagues and a budget to defend, I cannot compute an annual invoice for 400 people from anything public.
Personalwolke
The pricing page describes a model — monthly rent per employee per module, a one-time setup fee, multi-module and loyalty discounts, 30-day trial — but not a single euro figure, so I cannot compute the annual invoice for 400 people from public pages. Only the model description and free trial keep this above the nothing-published anchor.
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.