As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates JTL-Wawi 3.5/5 and Xentral 3/5 in ERP. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick JTL-Wawi and 0 pick Xentral. JTL-Wawi scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Finance, tax & compliance, Rollout, roles & operations, Pricing transparency, plus 3 more). Xentral scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty). Provenance — JTL-Wawi: EU-Made; Xentral: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
JTL-Wawi holds the higher mean on six of seven criteria, firmest in finance and compliance, 6.8 versus 5.8 with five judges leaning JTL-Wawi and one tie, and rollout and operations, 7.2 versus 6.5 with four leaning JTL-Wawi and two ties. Sovereignty leans the other way, 4.3 versus 4.0 with two judges for Xentral and four ties: Xentral's data residency is listed as EU-only, though its subprocessor exposure is listed as US Cloud Act, while JTL-Wawi's pages state the software remains on JTL's server with no public information on hosting country. Orders and inventory sits at 8.3 versus 8.0, two leans to JTL-Wawi and four ties, Xentral holding a flat 8 on batch, serial and best-before tracking. Weighted totals run 6.1 to 7.3 for JTL-Wawi and 5.8 to 6.8 for Xentral; the leans split by criterion, so no overall winner.
Choose JTL-Wawi if
You need GoBD-conform archiving, ELSTER and One-Stop-Shop transmission from the ERP — finance and compliance leans JTL-Wawi 6.8 to 5.8, five judges to one tie.
Your team sells across Amazon, eBay and 30+ marketplaces and needs automatic order import with real-time stock synchronisation that prevents overselling — orders and inventory runs 8.3 to 8.0.
You want edition prices up front: three editions are publicly priced and pricing transparency leans JTL-Wawi 6.0 to 5.5, while Xentral's pages cannot compute an annual total from the from-prices.
Your rollout and day-to-day operations load matters most — that criterion leans JTL-Wawi 7.2 to 6.5, four judges to two ties.
You file VAT returns directly from the ERP — JTL-Wawi documents ELSTER transmission, while Xentral's pages mark VAT advance returns as a long-term goal or limited to corrections.
Choose Xentral if
Your procurement requires an EU-only data residency listing — Xentral's data residency is listed as EU-only, though its subprocessor exposure is listed as US Cloud Act.
You need batch, serial and best-before tracking across warehouses with scanner goods receipt and batch picking — orders and inventory holds a flat 8 for Xentral, while JTL-Wawi's sharpest judge gap turned on serial-number and recall gaps.
Your data protection review needs a published data processing agreement and an external German data protection officer — both are published for Xentral; JTL-Wawi's pages give no public information on a data processing agreement.
Sovereignty is your deciding criterion — it is the only criterion where judges lean Xentral at all, 4.3 versus 4.0, two judges leaning Xentral and four ties.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Head of Finance
Closes the books for three companies every month and has retyped one supplier invoice too many. Wants incoming e-invoices read and matched to the purchase order, GoBD stated with a procedure documentation, DATEV for the tax adviser, intercompany postings that balance, and every figure traceable to the order and the person behind it.
JTL-Wawi
This judge's pick
Xentral
Criterion by criterion
Finance, tax & compliance
JTL-Wawi
GoBD is stated out of the box with revision-safe archiving, ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are received and processed, payments are pulled from banks and providers via HBCI/FinTS and matched to orders, dunning is configurable, VAT per country including OSS goes to ELSTER, and the DATEV story is unusually complete — export, a booking data service, a FiBu interface and even a network of vetted tax advisers. Before I would call it a full close I still need a procedure documentation, a stated general ledger structure with several companies in one tenant, and payroll, which the vendor itself places outside a Warenwirtschaft.
Xentral
Invoices leave as e-invoices in ZUGFeRD and XML, incoming ones are read in ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, XML and PDF with the booking prepared for release, and a one-click DATEV export covering invoices, credit notes, liabilities and accounts is exactly the hand-over my tax adviser wants. But the books close elsewhere: the vendor itself states that BWA, Saldenliste and UStVA directly from Xentral are a long-term goal, direct booking is only planned in limited scope, the immutable journal is marked as coming soon, and we found no public information on a GoBD procedure documentation or several companies in one tenant.
Purchasing, inventory & order processing
JTL-Wawi
The goods chain runs documented end to end: automatic purchase lists from minimum stock, lead times and sales forecasts, goods receipt, drop shipping, multiple warehouses with per-warehouse demand, barcode capture of storage location, batch and best-before, mobile picking, Amazon/eBay/Kaufland/Otto connections, returns with credit notes, and stock movements posting into valuation. We found no public information on serial number tracking or recall traceability from supplier to customer, which is what separates this from the top.
Xentral
The goods chain is documented end to end: orders from shops and marketplaces flow in automatically and update stock in real time, purchase orders come with scanned goods receipt and over/under-delivery detection, multiple warehouses carry batch, serial and best-before tracking with FiFo and LiFo, mobile batch picking scans the storage location, and ready-made carrier connections print the label while packing, with returns turned into credit notes and order proposals and EDI on top. Stock is valued from purchase price and every order logs who processed what and when; we found no public information on drop shipping or recall traceability per batch from supplier to customer.
Manufacturing, services & projects
JTL-Wawi
For the manufacturing model the vendor names, there are production bills of materials (several per article), ad-hoc, demand-driven and order-based production types with lot sizing, a touch workbench with checklists and instructions guiding each step, and batch and best-before assigned at the line, licensed per production station. No routings, work centres, capacity planning or cost flow to cost accounting are documented, and for service firms we found no public information on projects, time recording or milestone billing.
Xentral
Both models are named with working cores: piece lists with production orders including material consumption and time per order, outsourced production on the same platform, and for service firms projects with sub-projects, hours booked to the project and invoiced with two clicks, plus subscription and rental invoices and digitally signed service reports. The vendor itself states the limits — simple to medium production, not built for several manufacturing stages, capacity planning or machine connection — and we found no public information on project budgets or resource planning.
Integration, API & data portability
JTL-Wawi
There are 700-plus extensions in a store, out-of-the-box marketplace connections, bank and DATEV and Lexware and SAP links, a migration team that moves data from the previous system, and a documented local installation on your own server as an alternative to the cloud. The REST interface is named as an edition feature and described as beta, but we found no public information on an API reference, webhooks, or a documented full export when the company leaves.
Xentral
A connector marketplace with over 200 named integrations priced per month covers shops, marketplaces, payment providers, carriers, DATEV and BI, other channels attach via CSV, XML or the open API, and legacy documents come in through a document importer. We found no public information on a public versioned API reference, webhooks, or a documented full export of master data, documents and postings when a company leaves.
Rollout, roles & operations
JTL-Wawi
Three implementation paths are public — free self-service download with a guide and forum, a free initial consultation with installation by support staff, and over 280 certified partners with on-site care plus a project exchange — while permissions are fine-grained, every posting carries a timestamped change trace, support levels map to editions with response times from three working days down to half a day, and an availability commitment plus status pages exist. Typical implementation durations and an uptime history are not published, and the webinar series is currently paused.
Xentral
Go-live is planned in 8 to 12 weeks with named customer examples from 18 days, a tiered network of 56+ certified partner agencies covers implementation and first-level support, and support runs through helpbot, help centre, community, academy and tickets with an emergency flag. Customisation without code exists in Xentral Flows with automatic updates; we found no public information on user roles and permissions or on published service-level figures beyond a Premium-SLA label in the top plan.
European sovereignty
JTL-Wawi
The contracting entity is proven German — JTL-Software-GmbH in Hückelhoven, registered at Amtsgericht Mönchengladbach with a German VAT number — and the companies behind the finance, tax, DMS and customer-service modules are named with German addresses. The captured pages do not state where hosted data sits beyond JTL's own servers, name no hosting, AI or support subprocessors, and publish no ISO 27001 or C5 certificate, so I cannot confirm the chain end to end.
Xentral
The contracting entity is the German Xentral ERP Software GmbH with register court and VAT ID in Augsburg and a data processing agreement is offered, while the privacy policy names Amazon Web Services Inc. of Seattle as the provider and states the server location as Germany — a US hyperscaler in the chain. We found no public information on the ownership chain, further subprocessors behind the ERP service, or a certification such as ISO 27001 or BSI C5.
Pricing transparency
JTL-Wawi
Three of the four editions carry public monthly prices with unlimited users, a transparent per-order charge in bookable order packages quoted exactly (from 0.22 euro on Start down to 0.11 euro on Pro), and the production add-ons are priced per licence per month. The Enterprise edition is price on request, and we found no public information on minimum term, VAT treatment, migration cost or the data-return terms on cancellation, so the real annual cost is not fully computable.
Xentral
Four of five editions carry public from-prices — Launch ab 99 €/Monat up to 500.000 € annual revenue, Starter ab 349 € with 500 orders a month and unlimited users, Business ab 649 €, Pro ab 849 € — with a feature matrix per plan and marketplace connectors priced individually. The top plan Scale is auf Anfrage, the prices are stated to depend on revenue and shipping volume without a published rule, and we found no public information on implementation fees, minimum term, VAT treatment or what happens to the data on cancellation.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
JTL-Wawi
Xentral
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
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 JTL-Wawi higher: 3.5/5 against 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick JTL-Wawi and 0 pick Xentral. 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 JTL-Wawi or Xentral European?
JTL-Wawi is European (EU-Made). Xentral is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do JTL-Wawi and Xentral have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, JTL-Wawi’s own pages state a free plan; Xentral’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.