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 Skeptic
Has watched three HR suites promise one system and deliver five modules with a shared logo. Reads every claim for what it does not say: which module the feature lives in, what it costs on top, and whether "integration" means a maintained connector or a documented endpoint someone could build against.
HRworks
This judge's pick
Personalwolke
Criterion by criterion
Digital personnel file & data model
HRworks
A digital personnel file exists and is marketed as covering 'sämtliche Personaldaten und Dokumente', with configurable roles and need-to-know access — but the evidence never mentions an org chart, custom fields, or any dated contract/salary history, which is exactly what separates rubric level 5 from rubric level 3. A file that stores documents is not yet a system of record; silence on history means I score as if history is absent.
Personalwolke
The personnel file is four words on a feature list — "Digitale Personalakte, Personalverwaltung" — with "über 60 smarte Features" standing in for any detail. No org chart, no custom fields, no change history, no document types, no field-level permissions are so much as named; the evidence confirms records exist and nothing about their structure. That is the flat-file anchor, generously read.
Payroll handoff
HRworks
Payroll is a named module and a customer runs their Lohnabrechnung on it, with DATEV listed as 'Corporate und Schnittstellen Partner' — but nowhere is an export format named, a field scope defined, or mid-month joiners/leavers and variable pay addressed. A partner badge is not a maintained connector; I credit the named system but nothing more.
Personalwolke
"Schnittstelle Lohn/Gehalt optional" — an unnamed interface, marked optional in every tier, plus "vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung" and the travel module's "Lohnverrechnungsanbindung". No named payroll system (no DATEV, no BMD, nothing), no defined format, no mid-month joiner/leaver handling, no pre-payroll check; and even this thin handoff is an add-on line. That is the generic-interface anchor, word for word.
Absence & working-time
HRworks
Time recording is the best-evidenced area: stationary and smartphone capture, breaks, Soll/Ist control, overtime and minus hours, monthly overviews and automated reports, plus an explicit claim of automatic EuGH/DSGVO-conform documentation — which is more than a timer. But automatic entitlement and carry-over are never stated ('Berücksichtigung von Urlaub und Krankmeldung' is doing quiet work), and nothing on tamper-evidence or works-council monitoring limits.
Personalwolke
The one area with genuine specificity: vacation in days and hours with pro-rata entitlement for entry, part-time, exit and Karenz, start/stop capture, "komplexe Zeitwirtschaft inkl. Berechnung", terminal hardware and digital approval workflows. But the compliance half is entirely silent — no holiday calendars per location, no break/rest rules, no overtime accounts, no tamper-evidence, not one word on the ArbZG/BAG recording duty — so "inkl. Berechnung" stays marketing fog. Above the 5 anchor for proration and hardware, well short of 8.
Recruiting & onboarding
HRworks
Both halves of the join exist — applicant management with a branded jobs portal and AI job-ad drafts, and onboarding document collection — with 'gesamter Employee Life Cycle in einer Software' gesturing at the handover. But no structured stages, no rejection handling, no e-signature, no applicant deletion deadline, and the no-re-entry handover is a slogan ('von A bis Z'), not an evidenced flow.
Personalwolke
The module list is Time, Travel, Project Time and HR-Expert — no applicant tracking, no onboarding, no e-signature, no careers page anywhere in the evidence.
Employee data protection & co-determination
HRworks
The independent Bitkom Consult GDPR audit plus ISO 27001 are genuinely third-party evidence, and an AVV/TOM are available on request — but the evidence is silent on retention periods and executable deletion, and the logging covers inputs and logins, not who-read-what access. 'Rollen und Berechtigungen' is role-level, not field-level; the Bitkom report is the only reason this isn't a 4.
Personalwolke
A DPA exists "auf Anfrage" — literally the on-request anchor — and beyond a blanket "erfüllt alle Anforderungen der EU-DSGVO" plus SSL and 2FA, governance is undocumented: no retention periods, no deletion mechanics, no role model, no audit log, no subject-rights process. Telling detail: the vendor's own site runs Hotjar for "Verhaltensdaten, pseudonymisiertes Nutzerprofil", and nothing says product-side analytics can be switched off for a works council.
European sovereignty
HRworks
The buyer's basics are documented: HRworks GmbH with HRB Freiburg and German courts, EU server location on named AWS infrastructure. What's missing is the published subprocessor list — AWS is a US-headquartered provider, the rest of the chain is unnamed, and the pipeline itself couldn't confirm residency or subprocessors from the vendor's pages, which says something about how findable that documentation is.
Personalwolke
Hosting is stated plainly as Austria, inside the EU, and the imprint gives a full Austrian identity (Firmenbuch FN 188579 y, ATU VAT, Vienna address) — but the contracting name shifts between Workflow EDV GmbH and Workflow HR Systems GmbH, so I cannot confirm who I would actually be signing with. No data-centre provider named, no product subprocessor list (only website analytics appear), which parks this between the 3 and 5 anchors.
Pricing transparency
HRworks
There is no price list at all: pricing runs through a quote form ('Erhalten Sie Ihr passendes Angebot') and the two tiers (HR WORKS, HR WORKS Pro) are named but unnumbered. The only public pricing facts are negative or incidental — no minimum term and a free trial — so the annual invoice is not computable in any part; the page's own claim of 'Transparente Preise' next to a quote form takes some nerve.
Personalwolke
The pricing page publishes the shape of the invoice — monthly rent per employee and module, an unquantified "Einrichtungs-pauschale", loyalty and multi-module discounts, optional add-ons — and not a single euro figure. Even the payroll interface and the API are "optional" lines with no numbers, so an HR lead can compute nothing beyond the 30-day trial. That is the no-public-prices anchor, with one courtesy point for at least describing the model.
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.