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HR Management

Factorial

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

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

by Factorial HR S.L. · factorialhr.de

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Factorial: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Factorial: 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.

Factorial at a glance

Vendor
Factorial HR S.L.
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Factorial 1.5/5, the mean of 6 judges. Factorial HR S.L., a Barcelona-based HR Management vendor selling into the German market, presents a broad product menu while leaving most operational detail undocumented. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 15 Sep 2026 to 19 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 19 Oct 2026. all sources

Factorial alternatives, European ones first →

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

The IT Integrator

Weighted verdict

Owns identity and has to make the HR system the source of truth for accounts. Wants SCIM provisioning, SSO that is not an enterprise upsell, and an API with documentation rather than a partner form. Judges onboarding by whether it can create the account, not by whether it has a checklist.

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

Scored by The IT Integrator

Panel median The IT Integrator 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 IT Integrator
Digital personnel file & data model 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Payroll handoff 2 of 5 2 of 5
Absence & working-time 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Recruiting & onboarding 2 of 5 2 of 5
Employee data protection & co-determination 1.5 of 5 2 of 5
European sovereignty 1 of 5 1 of 5
Pricing transparency 0.5 of 5 1 of 5

Digital personnel file & data model

How this is scored

The system of record: employee master data, the digital personnel file, org structure, custom fields, and whether history is kept rather than overwritten.

0 — A contact list with job titles; no document storage, no org structure, no history — changes overwrite what was there.

3 — Employee records with document upload, but a flat structure: no org chart, few or no custom fields, and no dated history of contract or salary changes.

5 — Digital personnel file with structured document types, an org chart, custom fields, and change history on the core employment fields.

8 — Complete record: versioned contract and compensation history with effective dates, document templates with e-signature, org structure supporting multiple entities and cost centres, and granular field-level permissions.

10 — The file is the single source of truth an auditor could work from: full effective-dated history on every field, retention rules per document type, delegated administration per entity, and export that reproduces the record intact.

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The IT Integrator

Document-management pages sit in the vendor's captured sitemap, so a personnel file is at least marketed, but we found no public information on org structure, custom fields, or effective-dated change and salary history. We also found no public information on a documented API or an export that reproduces the record, and without that I cannot make this file the source of truth I would drive accounts from. 5 5

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Payroll handoff

How this is scored

Whether the month closes cleanly into payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, an in-house system or an external tax adviser — and how much of that is automated rather than re-typed.

0 — No payroll path stated at all; whatever leaves the system leaves as a spreadsheet somebody retypes.

3 — Generic CSV export said to be usable for payroll, with no named payroll system, no defined format and no handling of mid-month changes.

5 — A named payroll integration or a documented export format for at least one major system (e.g. DATEV LODAS/Lohn und Gehalt), covering the recurring monthly fields.

8 — Certified or vendor-maintained integration with a named payroll provider, covering variable pay, absences and mid-month joiners and leavers, with a documented pre-payroll check.

10 — Payroll is a first-class part of the product: maintained bidirectional integrations with several named systems, an auditable approval and lock step before transmission, retro-accounting for backdated changes, and the tax adviser given their own access.

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The IT Integrator

Dedicated pages for a DATEV integration exist in the vendor's integrations area, so a named payroll path is marketed rather than absent. We found no public information on the export format, automation, mid-month joiners and leavers, or a pre-payroll check, so I cannot tell how much of the month closes without re-typing. 7 8

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Absence & working-time

How this is scored

Vacation, sickness and working-time recording — including whether the product meets the German recording duty (BAG 2022, ArbZG) rather than merely offering a timer.

0 — No absence or time handling; both live in a spreadsheet elsewhere.

3 — Vacation requests with an approval step, but entitlement is manual, carry-over is not handled and there is no working-time recording.

5 — Automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, an absence calendar, and basic working-time capture with a report per employee.

8 — Configurable per country and contract: pro-rata entitlement, public-holiday calendars per location, break and rest-period rules, overtime accounts, and an export the employer can hand to a labour inspection.

10 — Working-time recording built as a legal obligation rather than a feature: tamper-evident records, documented compliance with the ArbZG recording duty, works-council-configurable monitoring limits, and shift or on-call models handled without add-ons.

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The IT Integrator

Vacation-management pages exist, but we found no public information on automatic entitlement calculation, carry-over, sickness recording, or any working-time recording, and nothing on how the German recording duty is met. For a German buyer that duty is the whole question, and the captured pages do not answer it. 9 10

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Recruiting & onboarding

How this is scored

The join path — vacancy to signed contract to a person who has an account, equipment and a plan on day one.

0 — Neither applicant tracking nor onboarding exists; hiring happens in a shared inbox.

3 — A basic applicant list with statuses, or an onboarding checklist — one of the two, without the handover between them.

5 — Applicant tracking with a careers page, structured stages and rejection handling, plus a checklist-driven onboarding that carries the hired candidate over into an employee record without re-entry.

8 — Multi-posting to named job boards, interview scheduling and scorecards, GDPR-conscious applicant retention and deletion, e-signed contracts, and onboarding that triggers tasks in IT and payroll.

10 — The whole join is one governed flow: approval-gated requisitions with budget, structured and bias-conscious evaluation, automated applicant deletion at the stated deadline, and provisioning driven from the record so day one needs no HR intervention.

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The IT Integrator

Pages exist for both applicant management and onboarding/offboarding, but we found no public information on how a hired candidate carries over into the employee record without re-entry. We also found no public information on SCIM provisioning, a documented API, or onboarding tasks that reach IT — my test is whether onboarding creates the account, and that is unanswered here. 11 12

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Employee data protection & co-determination

How this is scored

How the product handles the most sensitive personal data a company holds — retention, deletion, role separation, subject rights — and whether it can pass a works council (BetrVG §87) rather than merely a procurement checklist.

0 — No stated retention or deletion handling, no role model beyond admin-or-not, and no DPA offered on the site.

3 — A DPA exists on request and roles are coarse; retention and deletion are described as something the customer arranges themselves.

5 — A signable DPA is published, roles are configurable per module, applicant and employee retention periods are stated, and deletion can be executed rather than only promised.

8 — Field-level access control with an audit log of who read what, configurable retention per data category with automatic deletion, documented subject-rights support, and monitoring or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for the works council to say yes: published processing documentation and subprocessor list, per-entity data separation, tamper-evident audit trail, evaluation and behavioural-analysis features off by default with their scope documented, and a data-protection impact assessment the customer can build on.

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The IT Integrator

A platform data processing agreement is available, and the security pages name least-privilege access, logging and even AI training-data handling, which is more than a checkbox posture. We found no public information on retention periods per data category, executable deletion, or field-level role separation, so a works council review would have to start from the DPA and nothing else. 4

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether the answer is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as the buyer would weigh it.

0 — US-headquartered vendor, US contracting entity, hosting region unstated or US, subprocessors not named.

3 — EU hosting is offered as an option but the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is incomplete or absent.

5 — EU hosting stated as standard and an EU contracting entity, but the subprocessor chain includes non-EU providers without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, an EU contracting entity, the full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, contracting entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification of the data centres published, and an on-premises or private-cloud option for buyers who need it.

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The IT Integrator

The vendor is presented as a Barcelona company, but the captured pages name only Amazon Web Services and Azure as infrastructure with no region stated. We found no public information on data residency, on the contracting entity as confirmed on the vendor's own pages, or on any subprocessor list, so as a buyer I cannot say where the data lives. 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether an HR lead can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount — including the modules they actually need — from public pages alone.

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

3 — An entry price per employee exists, but the modules most buyers need are unpriced, or a minimum headcount, setup fee or mandatory onboarding package is not stated publicly.

5 — Per-employee prices are public for the main tiers with the billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed module (payroll, time, recruiting) hides in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and module priced publicly with per-employee maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table that produces the annual invoice for a given headcount and module selection, including setup, minimums and renewal terms.

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The IT Integrator

Pricing pages exist and were captured twice, yet no per-employee figure, billing period, minimum, or module price was confirmed from them. We found no public information on module-level pricing at all, so an HR lead cannot compute the annual invoice for their headcount from what is public. 2 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 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 Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Questions about Factorial

Is Factorial European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies Factorial as EU-Made.

Where does Factorial store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

Does Factorial have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Factorial?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates rexx systems (3.5/5), HRworks (3/5) and Kenjo (3/5) highest among the other 30 HR 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 rexx systems (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Factorial 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.

Do you know more about Factorial? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (14)

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

  1. 1 Vendor homepage factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 16 Sep 2026, 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Digital personnel file & data model — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 13 Oct 2026, 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Digital personnel file & data model — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Absence & working-time — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Absence & working-time — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Employee data protection & co-determination — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Employee data protection & co-determination — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →