The awork alternative for legally compliant working time records
awork plans and tracks project work. MetronHR records working time the way the Working Hours Act requires it, with break checks, an overtime account, a personnel file and a terminal.
All information about awork comes from the official provider pages. As at:2. September 2026.
Features in detail
| Feature | MetronHR | awork |
|---|---|---|
| Time tracking (web, mobile, terminal) | ~1 | |
| Overtime (automatic calculation) | 2 | |
| Traffic-light account (warning levels with an automatic alert) | 3 | |
| Working-time models (part-time, flexitime, trust-based working time) | 4 | |
| Shift and duty planning / roster | 5 | 6 |
| Allowances / hour packages | 7 | |
| Digital Employee File | 8 | |
| Onboarding and offboarding workflows | 9 | |
| Compliance (Working Time Act, Federal Labour Court ruling) | 10 | |
| Hosting operator without a US parent company | 11 | 12 |
Sources and notes (12)
- 1. awork, Time tracking (web, mobile, terminal): awork records time against tasks and projects, with evaluations of billability. Clocking arrivals, departures and breaks, a stationary terminal and checks against maximum working time and rest periods are not part of the feature set.
- 2. awork, Overtime (automatic calculation): awork does not keep an overtime account with a balance, payout and time off in lieu.
- 3. awork, Traffic-light account (warning levels with an automatic alert): The feature overview revolves around projects, utilisation and real-time budget control. A working-time account with warning levels and an automatic alert is not listed there (awork.com/de, retrieved 14 September 2026).
- 4. awork, Working-time models (part-time, flexitime, trust-based working time): Target hours, flexitime, trust-based working time and alternating weekly patterns are not part of the product. Capacity planning plans availability, not contracted hours.
- 5. MetronHR, Shift and duty planning / roster: An optional module, included in the Professional plan and activated per company, either as shift planning or as duty planning with a day plan. MetronHR also works entirely without both.
- 6. awork, Shift and duty planning / roster: awork plans capacity and project load, not shifts or rosters.
- 7. awork, Allowances / hour packages: Retainer projects can be represented; client-bound hour packages with automatic renewal and carry-over are not named as a separate feature in the plan overview.
- 8. awork, Digital Employee File: awork keeps user profiles for project work. Contracts, salary data, documents with expiry dates and employee self-service are not part of it.
- 9. awork, Onboarding and offboarding workflows: Under „team-on-board guarantee“ the plan overview mentions a guided rollout over six weeks with personal advice and a training guide. That is the rollout of the tool, not a person joining: an onboarding process with tasks, owners and deadlines is not listed (awork.com/de/preise, retrieved 3 September 2026).
- 10. awork, Compliance (Working Time Act, Federal Labour Court ruling): awork does not advertise compliance with the Working Hours Act. The Working Hours Act, the Minimum Wage Act and the Federal Labour Court ruling on the recording duty do not appear on the website. That is not a shortcoming but a focus: awork is project software.
- 11. MetronHR, Hosting operator without a US parent company: The operator is Hetzner Online GmbH, a German company with no US parent. This marketing website is hosted with Vercel, Inc. (USA) in the Frankfurt region, where no employee data is processed.
- 12. awork, Hosting operator without a US parent company: By its own account awork is hosted "on certified Microsoft servers in Germany". The location is therefore in Germany, the operator a US corporation.
~ = available with limits, the notes are below the table. – = no verified information is available for this provider on this feature. That is not a no: we only record a negative where we can cite a source.
An overview of which features exist at all, regardless of plan. The price-performance comparison is on the pricing page, the individual features in detail under Features.
Feature comparison as at September 2026. Information about competitors comes from publicly available sources, in each case the official provider pages with the date retrieved, and can change. awork is a trademark of its respective owner.
MetronHR is also available as a native app for iOS and Android:
Where the data sits
Server location and operator are two different questions. A data centre in Germany does not remove the data from US law: providers with a US parent company fall under the CLOUD Act and the surveillance powers of FISA 702, regardless of where the servers stand. Microsoft's chief legal officer in France testified under oath before the French Senate's committee of inquiry on 10 June 2025 that he could not guarantee that data from European data centres would not go to US authorities (record of the Sénat). That is why both are shown side by side here, each with the source it comes from.
What is compared is what the provider documents for its own application, not the infrastructure of its marketing website. More about our own hosting is in the Trust Center.
MetronHR
- Server location of the application
- Hetzner Online GmbH, Nuremberg and Falkenstein. All servers stand exclusively in Germany.
- Operator and legal jurisdiction
- Hetzner Online GmbH, a German company with no US parent and therefore beyond the reach of the CLOUD Act and FISA 702. No US provider sits in the data path for the application.
- Processors outside Germany
- None for the application. Payment is handled by Stripe Payments Europe (Ireland). This marketing website is hosted with Vercel, Inc. (USA, Frankfurt region), and analytics run through PostHog Cloud EU and the reverse proxy cdn.metronhr.de with a Cloudflare edge. No employee data is processed there.
- Source
- MetronHR privacy policyAs at 08/2026
awork
- Server location of the application
- Certified Microsoft servers in Germany, per the provider. awork is certified to ISO 27001.
- Operator and legal jurisdiction
- Microsoft, a US group, and therefore within the scope of the CLOUD Act and FISA 702. The provider is awork GmbH in Hamburg.
- Processors outside Germany
- awork names none for the application. For the website and operations, its consent manager includes Google, HubSpot, Intercom, Segment, Typeform, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok and Adobe, among others.
- Source
- awork, legal and data protectionabgerufen 02.09.2026
All information comes from the providers' publicly available privacy policies and security pages, and the date retrieved is on every card. Providers can change their infrastructure and their processors at any time. The adequacy decision on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework still applies, but is under legal challenge.
What MetronHR does better
Working time records, the way the law requires them
Since the Federal Labour Court decision of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21), employers must record the start, end and duration of daily working time. awork records time against tasks, not arrivals and departures, and checks neither maximum working time nor rest periods nor breaks. MetronHR clocks in the browser, in the app and at the terminal, checks the entry against the Working Time Act immediately and documents every correction traceably.
Personnel file, onboarding and absences in one system
Anyone using awork keeps contracts, documents, holiday entitlement and the joining process elsewhere, usually in a second HR tool or on a shared drive. That costs a second licence and duplicate master data. MetronHR brings the personnel file, absences, overtime and onboarding workflows together with time in the same system.
Holiday and sickness from the cheapest plan
At awork absences come only from the Standard plan, so from 11 euros per person per month billed annually. Holiday requests, approval, remaining holiday and sick leave are needed by every business, however many project features it uses. At MetronHR that is included in the Team plan at 5 euros, with a public holiday calendar for all 16 federal states and cover arrangements.
Client allowances with renewal and carry-over
Retainers are the norm in agencies: a fixed hour package per client per month, with unused hours carried over or lapsing. awork names no dedicated feature for this. MetronHR keeps allowances per client with a usage view, automatic renewal, a carry-over rule and a prepared invoice.
Price comparison
awork and MetronHR solve different problems. The price comparison therefore mainly shows what each plan contains at all.
| Service | MetronHR | awork |
|---|---|---|
| Project time, projects, personal planner | Professional 10 euros | Basic 5 euros billed annually, 7 euros billed monthly |
| + absences | included in Team at 5 euros already | only from Standard at 11 euros billed annually, 14 euros billed monthly |
| + comprehensive time reports and time tracking settings | included in Professional at 10 euros | only from Professional at 19 euros billed annually, 22 euros billed monthly |
| Working time records under the Working Time Act, break checks, terminal | included in Team | not part of the product |
| Overtime account, working-time models, personnel file | Overtime on Team, personnel file on Professional | not available |
| Capacity planning, task boards, automations, AI assistant | not available | Core product |
Project time, projects, personal planner
- MetronHR
- Professional 10 euros
- awork
- Basic 5 euros billed annually, 7 euros billed monthly
+ absences
- MetronHR
- included in Team at 5 euros already
- awork
- only from Standard at 11 euros billed annually, 14 euros billed monthly
+ comprehensive time reports and time tracking settings
- MetronHR
- included in Professional at 10 euros
- awork
- only from Professional at 19 euros billed annually, 22 euros billed monthly
Working time records under the Working Time Act, break checks, terminal
- MetronHR
- included in Team
- awork
- not part of the product
Overtime account, working-time models, personnel file
- MetronHR
- Overtime on Team, personnel file on Professional
- awork
- not available
Capacity planning, task boards, automations, AI assistant
- MetronHR
- not available
- awork
- Core product
Prices per awork.com/de/preise, retrieved on 2 September 2026, per user per month, plus VAT. awork quotes two prices for every plan, depending on annual or monthly billing. The Enterprise plan has no list price.
No credit card needed · cancellable monthly
Fromawork moving to MetronHR
Your data comes with you.awork hands them over as a file, MetronHR reads people, personal data, hours and absences out of it, and before anything is taken over you see row by row what will happen. For a team under thirty people that is a matter of one to two hours, most of it spent putting the file together.
- 1
Atawork export
- Recorded times for a project or a filter as an Excel file
- Time reports as Excel, raw or grouped, with selectable columns and custom rounding
- 2
Load the template and map the columns
The template comes as Excel and as CSV, with a second sheet that states for every column whether it is required, its format, an example and the permitted values. If your file's header row matches, the mapping falls away entirely. Otherwise the assistant proposes the mapping and marks everything that did not match word for word.
- 3
Check, then take it over
The dry run is mandatory and writes nothing. It shows for every row whether it will be created, changed, skipped or rejected, naming the column and the value behind the finding. Only the second click takes it over, in one transaction. The default is "create new ones only", and an empty cell never changes a value that has been maintained.
Export routes fromawork according to awork help centre, export your data, retrieved on06.09.2026.
Comes with you
- People, with staff number, work address and employment contract
- Remaining holiday and the overtime balance as an opening value per person
- Departments, clients, services and projects
- Time entries and absences for the current year
- Public holidays, including regions that differ
Does not come with you
- Files from the old personnel file, they are uploaded again
- The history of an hours account, MetronHR starts from the opening value
How the move works in detail, what the dry run shows and why no invitation email goes out with it is set out on the page switching time tracking.
Frequently asked questions
What you need to know about switching from awork to MetronHR.
Only partly; the two solve different problems. awork is project management with time tracking, MetronHR is time management and personnel administration with project time. Anyone looking for task boards, capacity planning and an AI assistant for agency work is in the right place with awork. Anyone who needs the legally required working time record, holiday management, an overtime account and a personnel file will not find it there.
awork costs 5 euros per user per month on the Basic plan billed annually, 7 euros billed monthly, Standard 11 or 14 euros, Professional 19 or 22 euros, each plus VAT; Enterprise on request. Absences come from Standard, comprehensive time reports from Professional. MetronHR costs 5 euros on Team and 10 euros on Professional, cancellable monthly, at the same price whether you pay monthly or annually. As at 2 September 2026.
awork does not claim it, and neither the Working Time Act nor the Federal Labour Court ruling appears on its website. The tool records time against tasks and projects. It is not built to evidence the start, end and duration of daily working time including breaks and rest periods. MetronHR checks every entry against the Working Time Act limits and records corrections with person and timestamp on the Professional plan.
awork is certified to ISO 27001 and is hosted, per the provider, „on certified Microsoft servers in Germany“. The location is therefore in Germany, but the operator is a US group; a data centre in Germany does not remove the data from US law. MetronHR runs at Hetzner Online GmbH, a German company with no US parent.
It happens, and it often makes sense in agencies: awork for project control and capacity planning, MetronHR for working time records, holiday, overtime and the personnel file. Anyone wanting to avoid recording time twice should check whether MetronHR's project time with client, project, activity, hourly rate and budget is enough for their needs.
Times, projects and clients yes; awork offers exports and a documented API in its developer portal. Tasks, boards, automations and documents cannot be carried over, because MetronHR does not do project management. Anyone who needs that control should keep awork and use MetronHR alongside it for time management.
Question not answered here? Every step is explained in the help centre.
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