The benches split along two lines. Shiftbase leads on roster planning (5.3 vs 4.0, five judges leaning Shiftbase, one tie), working time rules (2.5 vs 1.3, six judges leaning Shiftbase), staff self service (6.2 vs 5.2, four lean Shiftbase, two tie) and payroll and integrations (6.2 vs 5.3, four lean Shiftbase, two tie). Staffomatic takes sovereignty, 5.0 vs 3.3, with six judges leaning Staffomatic; its subprocessor exposure attribute reads "EU only" against Shiftbase's "US CLOUD Act reach", both hold data residency "EU only", their legal entities sit in DE and NL, and ownership is unknown for both. Pricing transparency is tied at 6.8 to 6.8 (six ties), as is codetermination and privacy at 4.0 to 4.0. Of the weighted totals shown, four benches put Shiftbase ahead and the works council is level at 4.2 to 4.2; Shiftbase's totals range 4.0 to 5.3, Staffomatic's 3.7 to 4.4; the operations director's total is not shown.
Choose Shiftbase if
You need the strongest roster planning: Shiftbase scores 5.3 to Staffomatic's 4.0, with five judges leaning Shiftbase and one tie.
Your operations depend on working time rules: Shiftbase scores 2.5 to Staffomatic's 1.3 and six judges lean Shiftbase, though its captured pages name no actual rule and compliance appears only as a coming add-on at 0,50 € / Monat / Mitarbeiter.
Your staff manage availability, open shifts, in-app swaps and a geofenced time clock from iOS and Android apps: staff self service leans Shiftbase 6.2 to 5.2 (four judges lean, two ties).
You export approved hours to DATEV format and to Personio over the API: payroll and integrations leans Shiftbase 6.2 to 5.3 (four judges lean, two ties).
You weight the frontline-employee perspective: that bench's weighted total reads Shiftbase 5.2 to Staffomatic 3.7.
Choose Staffomatic if
You require subprocessor exposure listed as EU only: Staffomatic's subprocessor exposure attribute reads EU only, while Shiftbase's reads US CLOUD Act reach, and six judges lean Staffomatic on sovereignty (5.0 vs 3.3).
Your contract calls for a German legal entity: Staffomatic's legal entity jurisdiction attribute is DE; Shiftbase's is NL.
You answer to a works council that weighs codetermination and sovereignty together: codetermination and privacy is level at 4.0 to 4.0 with six ties, and the works council's weighted totals read 4.2 to 4.2, while sovereignty leans Staffomatic 5.0 to 3.3.
Your procurement screens out US Cloud Act exposure in subprocessor handling: the captured sovereignty attribute reads US CLOUD Act reach for Shiftbase and EU only for Staffomatic.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Skeptic
Has read a great many pages saying the product "supports" the Arbeitszeitgesetz and wants to know whether it blocks a violation, warns about it, or merely exports it. Reads for which tier the time clock and the DATEV export sit in, how seasonal staff are counted per employee, and what the forecasting "AI" actually uses as input.
Shiftbase
This judge's pick
Staffomatic
Criterion by criterion
Roster building & demand planning
Shiftbase
Availability, open shifts, swap requests, conflict hints and 'automatische Dienstplanung' are on the page, along with departments, multiple locations and franchise sizes — but we found no public information on shift templates, qualifications, per-shift staffing requirements, or labour cost shown against budget while planning. The revenue coming back from the till is the only named data source, and nothing documents what 'Shiftbase AI' uses as input.
Staffomatic
Templates for shift and week plans, shift swaps and shift applications are on the homepage, and qualifications, availabilities and prioritised shifts arrive in the middle paid tier — but we found no public information on staffing requirements per shift, on multiple locations or departments, or on demand planning of any kind. The only artificial intelligence the pages document is a support-reply drafter fed by Make.com and the Claude API, not a forecaster reading POS or occupancy data.
Working-time law & collective agreements
Shiftbase
No Arbeitszeitgesetz rest period, break or daily maximum, no Minijob earnings limit and no Tarifvertrag surcharge is named anywhere in the captured pages, and nothing says whether a check blocks, warns or is merely exported. The only compliance item anywhere is a priced add-on marked 'bald' whose contents are not described.
Staffomatic
We found no public information naming any working-time rule — no eleven-hour rest period, no breaks, no daily maximum, no Minijob ceiling, no collective agreement; the vendor's conformity claim is about data protection only, one hundred percent DSGVO. What the pages do show is a working-time account and an overtime account in the top tier plus surcharges next to the DATEV export, which counts hours and money rather than checking a single provision of the working-time law.
Mobile self-service for deskless staff
Shiftbase
iOS and Android apps with availability entry, open shifts, in-app swaps, absences and holiday, a time clock with stamp locations and geofencing, and five interface languages are shown. We found no public information on manager approval of swaps, push notification of changes, offline clock-in handling, or swaps and open shifts being checked against qualification or rest-period rules; team chat is an early-access add-on priced 't.b.d.'.
Staffomatic
The basic tier ships a mobile app with shift swap and shift applications, vacations are checked and approved in the absence planner, and mobile time capture plus a punch-clock app are advertised on the homepage, with availability entry one tier up. We found no public information on push notification of changes, offline handling, a multilingual interface, or swap approvals checked against qualifications and rest periods.
Works council & employee data
Shiftbase
Roles and permissions, processor status, breach reporting to the German supervisory authority and deletion after subscription end are documented, and admin full access without customer permission is disclosed — but geofencing is offered with no statement on switching it off, and we found no public information on configurable visibility of absence reasons, an audit log of who viewed or changed a person's data, or documentation for works-council approval. The captured pages also give different figures for how long data is kept after termination (30, 60 and 90 days each appear).
Staffomatic
A role model called roles and rights appears in the middle tier and a protocol of thirty, sixty or ninety days depending on the plan, but we found no public information on what that protocol records, on who may see whose absence reasons, or on configurable deletion of employee schedule data. To the vendor's credit the privacy policy states stored data types, retention periods for several categories, full subject rights and an external German data protection officer — though we found no public information on a model works agreement or on any monitoring functions that can be switched off.
Payroll handoff & integrations
Shiftbase
Approved hours go out in DATEV format, Personio connects via API, till revenue flows back to the schedule, and API documentation exists — a real handoff, not a spreadsheet. But the open API sits only in the Enterprise plan, surcharge and wage-type mapping is not described, and we found no public information on a lock step before transmission beyond 'freigegebene Stunden', retro corrections, tax-adviser access, webhooks or a deprecation policy.
Staffomatic
The DATEV export and surcharge handling sit in the top tier only, the Personio interface and API access in the middle one, and time tracking is billed as perfect preparation for payroll — so a named payroll export plus a named HR connection is evidenced. We found no public information on a lock step before transmission, on wage types mapped per surcharge, on any POS integration feeding the plan, or on retro corrections after the close, and the public evidence for API documentation amounts to the single word "API".
European sovereignty
Shiftbase
The legal notice names Shiftbase B.V. in Zoetermeer with KvK and VAT numbers, yet the independently sourced sovereignty attributes record entity jurisdiction, data residency and subprocessor exposure as unconfirmed. Hosting region and data-centre provider appear nowhere public, and the subprocessor list is retrievable only behind a password rather than published — so where the employee data physically lives remains a question the pages do not answer.
Staffomatic
The legal notice shows a Hamburg limited company entered in a German register, and the privacy policy names its processors country by country — including US firms such as HubSpot, Celonis's Make.com and Microsoft Advertising — under a general standard-contractual-clauses clause. Hosting appears only as management of servers via a partner from Germany with no data-centre provider named, and the independently sourced sovereignty attributes leave data residency, ownership and subprocessor exposure unconfirmed, so several open questions remain for the buyer's works council.
Pricing transparency
Shiftbase
All three paid tiers carry public prices with per-employee increments and monthly billing stated, onboarding has fixed one-time prices from 0 € to 575 €, and the trial needs no payment data — decent arithmetic for a buyer. But the chat add-on is 't.b.d.', and we found no public information on VAT treatment, minimum term, how seasonal or inactive staff are counted, or which tier carries the time clock and payroll export.
Staffomatic
All three tiers carry a per-person monthly price with a ten-person minimum stated, VAT treatment and both billing periods are published, and the feature-to-tier mapping tells a buyer exactly where the time tracking and the DATEV export sit. The annual option is advertised only as saving up to 17 percent, so the actual annual figure is not computable from public pages, and we found no public information on how inactive or seasonal staff are counted toward the invoice.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Shiftbase
Staffomatic
Legal entity
Incorporated in NL
Incorporated in DE
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
EU only
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.