Weighted totals split the panel: Kenjo ahead with people-lead (4.1 vs 3.4), The Data Protection Officer (3.3 vs 3.2), IT-integrator (3.7 vs 2.6) and skeptic (2.9 vs 2.8) benches; Personalwolke ahead with payroll-officer (3.5 vs 3.3) and works-council (3.6 vs 3.4). Kenjo leads recruiting and onboarding (4.0 vs 0.0, six judges), core HR records (4.0 vs 3.2, five judges, one tie) and pricing transparency (5.3 vs 1.7, six judges) — pricing excluded from Kenjo's totals (vendor publishes no prices), included in Personalwolke's. Personalwolke leads time and absence (5.7 vs 4.3, six judges), payroll readiness (3.7 vs 2.3, six judges) and sovereignty (4.0 vs 3.5; three lean Personalwolke, one Kenjo, two ties). Employee data governance ties at 3.0, three judges each way. Kenjo's bench flagged sovereignty: imprint at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, hosting and subprocessor exposure unknown, Anthropic PBC (USA) named for transcript analysis. Personalwolke's attributes: Austrian jurisdiction, EU-only residency, US CLOUD Act exposure.
Choose Kenjo if
You need recruiting and onboarding: an ATS add-on plus onboarding/off-boarding are evidenced modules, and the lean is Kenjo six judges to none (4.0 vs 0.0).
You need core HR records — personnel file, org chart, digital signature — where the lean is Kenjo five judges with one tie (4.0 vs 3.2).
Your shortlist scores pricing transparency as a criterion: six judges lean Kenjo (5.3 vs 1.7), and pricing was excluded from its weighted totals because the vendor publishes no prices.
You need a German-registered vendor: the imprint pins Kenjo GmbH at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg (HRB B 183681B), and the legal entity jurisdiction is Germany.
Choose Personalwolke if
You need payroll readiness: the lean is Personalwolke six judges to none (3.7 vs 2.3); Kenjo's verdict names payroll prep as a module title only, with the APIs and integrations a handoff needs in the demo-gated Connect tier.
Time and absence is your make-or-break criterion: the lean is Personalwolke six judges to none (5.7 vs 4.3).
Sovereignty scoring matters to your decision: Personalwolke leads 4.0 vs 3.5, with three judges leaning Personalwolke, one Kenjo and two ties.
Your review needs the subprocessor exposure on record: Personalwolke's is stated as US CLOUD Act exposure, Kenjo's as unknown.
You need an Austrian legal entity: Personalwolke's legal entity jurisdiction is Austria.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Payroll Officer
Closes payroll every month and answers to the tax adviser when it is wrong. Cares about one thing above all: whether the month leaves this system clean, with backdated changes, mid-month leavers and variable pay handled. Treats "CSV export" as a confession, not a feature.
Kenjo
Personalwolke
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Digital personnel file & data model
Kenjo
Digital personnel file, organigramm and digital signature are real modules, with document management in Starter, but the evidence says nothing about dated change history, custom fields, multi-entity structures or field-level permissions. Nice folder; not yet a system of record you could audit a backdated salary change in.
Personalwolke
"Digitale Personalakte" and "Personalverwaltung" are listed as headline features, so a file exists, but the evidence says nothing about org structure, custom fields, or dated history of contract or salary changes — I close months on effective-dated changes, and there is no evidence a change is kept rather than overwritten. That is a flat file with documents, nothing more.
Payroll handoff
Kenjo
"Vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung" and "Abrechnungsmanagement" are module names only: no named payroll system, no defined export format, no variable-pay, absence or mid-month joiner/leaver handling, and the only integration path sits in the unpriced Connect tier. Someone is retyping this month into something — the evidence never says what.
Personalwolke
A payroll path is stated — "Schnittstelle Lohn/Gehalt" (optional in three plans), "vorbereitende Lohnabrechnung", and travel expenses feeding "Lohnverrechnungsanbindung" — which is more than a generic CSV confession. But no payroll system is named, no format is documented, and mid-month joiners/leavers, variable pay and retro-accounting are never mentioned, so it stays below the named-integration tier.
Absence & working-time
Kenjo
Leave management, time tracking, shift planning and a time-clock terminal are evidenced, which beats a bare request form. But nothing on automatic entitlement, carry-over, sickness, break rules or any reference to the ArbZG/BAG recording duty or tamper-evidence — a timer is not a legal record.
Personalwolke
Vacation management with aliquotation explicitly covering Eintritt, Teilzeit, Austritt and Karenz is exactly the proration I need for mid-month leavers, and there is start/stop capture, terminal hardware and "komplexe Zeitwirtschaft inkl. Berechnung" with reports. But carry-over, sickness, holiday calendars and any word on ArbZG recording duty or tamper-evidence are absent, so it does not reach the legal-obligation tier.
Recruiting & onboarding
Kenjo
An ATS exists as a priced add-on and onboarding/offboarding is a listed module, with applicant deletion at 6 months and a 2-year talent pool stated in the privacy policy. No evidence of a careers page, structured stages, or the handover that turns a hired candidate into an employee record without re-entry.
Personalwolke
The module list is Time, Travel, Project Time and HR-Expert, and of the "über 60 smarte Features" not one is applicant tracking or onboarding — the evidence is silent on the entire join path. Hiring stays in the shared inbox.
Employee data protection & co-determination
Kenjo
The privacy policy is substantive: automatic deletion at stated retention periods, Arts 15-21 rights, a DPO, AI-training exclusion and no profiling. But no signable DPA is evidenced, no role or field-level permissions, no audit log, and the HR-analytics and survey modules come with no evidence they can be switched off for a works council.
Personalwolke
A DPA is available on request, GDPR conformity is claimed, and the security story is SSL plus 2FA — but no retention periods, no executable deletion, no audit log, no role granularity, and the only subprocessors named are the website's analytics tools. That is the DPA-on-request tier and no further.
European sovereignty
Kenjo
The imprint pins vendor and contracting entity as Kenjo GmbH, Berlin, with German register and VAT numbers. But the product's hosting region is unconfirmed — the EEA/Germany statement covers the web-analytics stack — and there is no published subprocessor list, with Anthropic (USA) and Google named incidentally for transcription.
Personalwolke
The server is stated to be in Österreich and the imprint shows an Austrian Firmenbuch entry, VAT ID and Vienna address, so as a buyer I read a genuinely EU vendor. But the data-centre provider is unnamed and the product's own subprocessor chain is unpublished — the pipeline's unknowns are real — which keeps it one tier down.
Pricing transparency
Kenjo
Starter at €6 and Growth at €10 per employee are public with a monthly/annual toggle showing 10% annual saving, onboarding from a stated €400 one-time, and the recruiting add-on priced at €249/month. It fails at the top: Connect, holding the APIs and integrations a payroll path would need, is demo-gated with no number, and VAT treatment and minimum term are unstated.
Personalwolke
The pricing page describes the model — "Monatliche Miete auf Basis Mitarbeiteranzahl & Module", a one-time setup fee, module and loyalty discounts, 30-day trial — but not a single euro figure appears anywhere on the evidence. No HR lead can compute an annual invoice from this; it is a sales conversation dressed as a price page.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Kenjo
Personalwolke
Legal entity
Incorporated in DE
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.