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Absence Management

BrightHR

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by BrightHR Ltd · www.brighthr.com

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BrightHR: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai BrightHR: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

BrightHR at a glance

Vendor
BrightHR Ltd
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Default not stated; pages mention United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand source, captured 28 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates BrightHR 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. BrightHR is a UK-framed absence management suite, judged strongest on payroll handover with a flat 5: a documented open API with a developer portal covering leave balances, absence requests and Blip time-and-attendance data, Zapier links to over 5,000 services, and a sync into the vendor's own payroll software — with no public information on DATEV or other German payroll integrations. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 27 Oct 2026 to 28 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 29 Oct 2026. all sources

BrightHR alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Knows "eAU supported" can mean a photo upload, "DATEV integration" can mean a CSV, and "GDPR-compliant" can mean every manager sees every diagnosis-adjacent note. Reads for who actually retrieves the certificate, which leave rules are computed rather than typed in, and whether the carry-over expiry notice exists at all.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Panel median The Skeptic This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Skeptic
Entitlements & German leave rules 2 of 5 2 of 5
Requests, approvals & team calendar 2 of 5 2 of 5
Sick leave, eAU & continued pay 2 of 5 1.5 of 5
Payroll handover, time tracking & API 2.5 of 5 2.5 of 5
Health data, access & works council 1.5 of 5 2 of 5
European sovereignty 2 of 5 2 of 5

Entitlements & German leave rules

How this is scored

Whether the tool computes leave the way German and Austrian law and contracts do: entitlements per contract and working-time model, part-time proration, carry-over and expiry with the required notice, public holidays per federal state, half days and hourly leave, and special leave types.

0 — Not a leave tool; entitlements and leave balances cannot be kept in the product.

3 — Annual entitlements per employee with remaining balances, public holidays, and custom leave types.

5 — Entitlements prorated for part-time working days and for joiners and leavers, public holidays per German federal state or Austrian region, and configurable carry-over with an expiry date.

8 — Several working-time models per employee with changes over time recalculated, half days and hourly leave, carry-over expiry with automatic notices to employees before leave lapses (as the BAG requires), special and parental leave types with their own rules, and entitlement changes logged.

10 — Leave law modelled and documented: entitlement rules per contract or collective agreement, statutory minimum and contractual leave kept apart where they expire differently, balances recalculated retroactively with an audit trail, and the rules a tool applies published in its help centre.

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The Skeptic

Automatic annual-leave calculations, balance tracking, and pro-ration from the start date and to the leaving date are documented, and the calculator takes contractual entitlement and bank-holiday inclusion as inputs. But everything speaks UK law — 5.6 weeks statutory, a 1.6-week carry-over cap — and I found no public information on German federal-state holidays, half-day or hourly leave, or expiry notices before carried-over leave lapses; the carry-over pages read as legal guidance for employers rather than rules the tool computes. 4 5 5 7

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Requests, approvals & team calendar

How this is scored

The everyday flow: an employee requests leave on a phone, the right person approves, a substitute is named, and the team can plan around it — judged on configurable approval chains and on what colleagues are allowed to see.

0 — No request flow; absences are entered by an administrator only.

3 — Leave requests with an approval by a manager, and a shared team calendar of absences.

5 — Requests and approvals from a mobile app, approvers configurable per team or department, email or push notifications, and a team calendar that syncs with Outlook or Google Calendar.

8 — Multi-level approval chains, substitutes named on the request, minimum staffing rules or blackout periods, delegation while the approver is away, calendar visibility per role that hides the absence reason, Microsoft Teams or Slack integration, and every request, approval and cancellation logged.

10 — Approval logic that matches a real organisation: rules per location, team and leave type, conflicts checked against staffing and shift plans before approval, a complete history per request, and reporting on pending and overdue approvals.

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The Skeptic

Requests can be accepted or denied on the mobile app with clash notifications and a team calendar showing who's off — a real approval flow, not administrator entry. But I found no public information on approval chains configurable per team, named substitutes, staffing minimums or blackout periods, or whether colleagues see anything beyond the absence itself; the delegation in the terms is admins delegating system access, not an approver delegating while away. 5 7 8 5

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Sick leave, eAU & continued pay

How this is scored

Sick notifications and the German electronic certificate of incapacity: whether the tool retrieves the eAU from the health insurer itself or through a named payroll system, how sick days are counted towards the six-week continued-pay (EFZG § 3) and BEM (SGB IX § 167) thresholds, and how child-sick days and certificates from private insurance are handled.

0 — No sick-leave recording; the product handles holiday only.

3 — Sick leave recorded as its own absence type, with a certificate uploaded by the employee.

5 — Sick notification by the employee in the app, eAU retrieval offered with the route stated (by the tool itself or via a named payroll system), and child-sick days as a separate type.

8 — eAU retrieval from the statutory health insurers documented end to end with the certified software named, retrieval status and results written back to the absence, sick days counted towards the six-week continued-pay limit per illness, BEM thresholds flagged to HR only, and paper certificates for privately insured employees handled.

10 — Sick leave handled as the regulated process it is: eAU retrieval automated with error and follow-up handling, continued-pay and sickness-benefit transitions tracked, BEM invitation workflow supported, reasons and documents restricted to named roles, and the whole process documented in the help centre.

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The Skeptic

Sick leave is its own tracked type with employee-uploaded sick notes and return-to-work documents, and sick pay is calculated automatically — but the pay logic is UK statutory sick pay synced to payroll, not the six-week continued-pay regime, and the certificate route is upload, not retrieval. I found no public information on electronic certificate retrieval from health insurers, any named German payroll route, child-sick days, or BEM thresholds; Bradford Factor scoring is the nearest thing to pattern analysis. 7 8

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Payroll handover, time tracking & API

How this is scored

Getting absences into the payroll run with the right codes and keeping balances consistent with time tracking: exports or integrations for the payroll systems German companies use, time-account interaction, and an API.

0 — A closed tool with no export, integration or API.

3 — A CSV or Excel export of absences per month for the payroll office.

5 — An export or integration for DATEV (LODAS or Lohn und Gehalt) or another named payroll system, and either a documented API or absences shared with a named time-tracking tool.

8 — Several named payroll integrations, absence types mapped to configurable payroll codes, absence and overtime balances shared with time tracking, monthly closing that locks past periods, webhooks, and an API with published limits.

10 — Payroll handover that closes the month: absences, sick days and eAU results delivered to payroll in its own format with corrections flagged, a period lock with an audit trail, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, and the full absence history exportable at contract end.

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The Skeptic

There is a documented open API with a developer portal covering leave balances, absence requests, employee HR data and Blip time-and-attendance data, plus a sync into BrightHR's own payroll product and Zapier connections to 5,000+ services. But the payroll system named is the vendor's own UK-facing one — I found no public information on DATEV or any German payroll format, on mapping absence types to payroll codes, on webhooks or published API limits, or on locking past periods. 9 10 7

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Health data, access & works council

How this is scored

What the tool does with data that is health data in law (GDPR Art. 9): who can see a sickness reason or certificate, how long absence records are kept, whether access is logged, and whether the vendor documents what a works agreement on absence recording needs.

0 — The vendor describes every absence and its reason as visible to all users, with no roles.

3 — Roles for employees, managers and administrators that govern who sees absence data.

5 — Sickness reasons and certificates restricted to HR or named roles, colleagues shown only that someone is absent, and a data processing agreement offered.

8 — Field-level permissions per leave type, access to health-related records logged, retention rules per record type with automatic deletion, employees able to see their own records, and documentation aimed at works councils or a works agreement.

10 — Health data governed and evidenced: Art. 9 GDPR processing explained per feature, deletion runs logged and reportable, audit logs exportable, no analytics or AI features run on sickness data without explicit configuration, and the vendor publishing a template or checklist for the works agreement.

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The Skeptic

Access is restricted by role and need, two-factor authentication and admin-change monitoring are documented, deletion on request is permanent, and a data processing agreement with GDPR language is offered. But nothing names sickness specifically: I found no public information on field-level permissions per leave type, access logs on health records, retention periods per record type, or documentation aimed at a works council — this is ICO-registered UK practice, not special-category governance. 3 2 8

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where absence and sickness data lives, who the contracting entity is, and who the subprocessors are — including email, push-notification and support providers. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; dimensions the evidence does not establish are unknown, not non-European.

0 — Vendor, contracting entity and hosting all shown to be outside the EU, with no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement offered, with hosting or the contracting entity outside the EU or not established.

5 — EU hosting stated and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, with a data processing agreement offered.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published with locations, and a DPA that covers sickness data as special-category processing.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, and certification (ISO 27001, BSI C5 or equivalent) published.

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The Skeptic

The group is headquartered in Manchester with a UK registered company, hosting is on Microsoft Azure, and EU storage is stated only for customers subscribing in the Republic of Ireland — while the contracting entity may be any BrightHR legal entity in the group. No subprocessor list with locations is published, and the Azure dependence carries a US-parent exposure the captured pages do not resolve; ISO 27001 and other certifications exist, but ownership and the entity for a European mainland buyer remain unestablished. 3 2 8 5

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per employee or per user, which features (eAU, payroll export, time tracking) sit in which tier, minimum users and the minimum term.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A public "from" price, a free tier, or one priced tier, with the rest on request.

5 — Prices for each tier public with the billing period (per month or per year) and the pricing basis (per employee or per user).

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its basis, which tier includes eAU, payroll export and time tracking stated, add-on prices listed, minimum users, minimum term and VAT treatment given.

10 — Complete price computability: the annual invoice derivable for a given headcount and feature set, with every add-on, setup fee and overage published.

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The Skeptic

No per-employee or per-user price appears anywhere I read — the only public route is "Get a price online", and the terms say fees are "agreed in writing" and fixed for the initial term. The terms do reveal mechanics a buyer needs: automatic renewal unless 90 days' notice is given, renewal increases of up to 7%, additional services at extra cost, and proportionate charges for "manifestly excessive" usage — but none of it lets you compute an annual invoice. 1 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Questions about BrightHR

Is BrightHR European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where BrightHR is based.

Where does BrightHR store data?

The default storage location for customer data is not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026. The vendor’s pages mention United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand as hosting locations, per the vendor’s page captured 28 Oct 2026.

Does BrightHR have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to BrightHR?

As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Kenjo (3/5), flair (3/5) and HRlab (2.5/5) highest among the other 18 Absence Management products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Kenjo (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: BrightHR alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (10)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Terms of service — found from the homepage www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Security / trust page — found from the homepage www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Entitlements & German leave rules — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Entitlements & German leave rules — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 27 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Requests, approvals & team calendar — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 27 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Sick leave, eAU & continued pay — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Sick leave, eAU & continued pay — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Payroll handover, time tracking & API — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 27 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Payroll handover, time tracking & API — found from sitemap www.brighthr.com Checked 27 Oct 2026 Details →