The Papershift alternative without a mandatory support fee
You get a duty roster, time tracking and a personnel file with both. At MetronHR without a monthly support fee, and with project time, client allowances and onboarding workflows.
All information about Papershift comes from the official provider pages. As at:2. September 2026.
Features in detail
Sources and notes (10)
- 1. Papershift, Traffic-light account (warning levels with an automatic alert): The feature overview mentions time tracking, legally compliant documentation and reports and analysis. Warning levels on the working-time account with an automatic alert are not stated there (papershift.com/funktionen, retrieved 14 September 2026).
- 2. Papershift, Project time tracking / budgets: Papershift runs a keyword page on project time tracking, but project time with clients, budgets and hourly rates is not listed as a feature in the package overview.
- 3. Papershift, Allowances / hour packages: Premiums, pay types and absence rules with blocking periods are very detailed. Client-bound hour packages with renewal and carry-over are not provided for.
- 4. Papershift, Onboarding and offboarding workflows: There are workflows for approving duty rosters. A process for employees joining and leaving with tasks, owners and deadlines is not documented.
- 5. MetronHR, Application hosted in Germany: The application and customer data run at Hetzner Online GmbH in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, exclusively in Germany.
- 6. Papershift, Application hosted in Germany: In the Core package Papershift promises „GDPR-compliant data storage (EU hosting)“. A data centre in Germany is not promised.
- 7. 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.
- 8. Papershift, Hosting operator without a US parent company: Not named. The list of sub-processors is available for download as an annex to the data processing agreement, not as information on the page.
- 9. MetronHR, API: The open REST API v1 is part of the Professional plan: readable are employees, departments, clients, services, projects, time entries, absences and published shifts, while clients, services, projects, time entries and absences can be changed, each secured by keys with permissions per resource. Outgoing webhooks and the MCP server for AI assistants also belong to Professional. Sign-in via Microsoft Entra ID comes with every plan. Further integrations are agreed individually in the Enterprise offer.
- 10. Papershift, API: The open API belongs to the Enterprise package, which is offered on request only. It is not included in Core, Premium or Professional.
~ = 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. Papershift 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
Papershift
- Server location of the application
- Papershift promises EU hosting, without naming a country or data centre. The provider is Papershift GmbH from Karlsruhe.
- Operator and legal jurisdiction
- Not named. Papershift publishes data protection objectives, a record of processing activities, the technical and organisational measures and the list of sub-processors as downloadable documents for the data processing agreement.
- Processors outside Germany
- Not shown on the page but in the annex to the data processing agreement. The website's privacy policy names Google, Mixpanel (Delaware, USA), Facebook and HubSpot.
- Source
- Papershift data protection and securityabgerufen 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.
Connections to other software
Papershift
- DATEV export as PDF, CSV and XLS
- Personio
- Lohn24
- Fareharbor
Here too Personio is the connection to personnel administration, not the payroll software itself.
Source: The provider's feature overview, retrieved on03.09.2026.
MetronHR
MetronHR connects to no other software today. What exists: the export as Excel and CSV for every report, plus an iCal feed that carries absences and the duty plan into Outlook and Google. Lexware Office and sevdesk come next.
A long list of connections is not the price of entry in this market: two of the five providers surveyed name only two to four connections themselves.
What MetronHR does better
Plan and check against the Working Time Act as you go
Papershift plans shifts and advertises templates per industry. But what the plan produces also has to hold up: a duty that breaks the rest period only shows up in the reporting if nobody warns while planning. MetronHR checks as you plan: the eleven hours of rest between two working days, the daily and the weekly maximum, plus the tighter limits of the Youth Employment Protection Act for underage trainees and of the Maternity Protection Act. Staffing rules tie activities to qualifications, including several at once, and if someone drops out the request goes to the pool rather than to management.
No support contract as a mandatory component
On its pricing page Papershift writes: „our Basic support (39.00 euros a month) is already included in every booking“ and marks it as a mandatory part of every package, with a one-year term. For a business with eight people on the Core package that is 32 euros of software and 39 euros of support, so more support than software. At MetronHR the answer by email is included in the price, with no separate contract and no annual commitment.
Project time with client, budget and hourly rate
Papershift plans shifts and bills them, with very precise premium and pay-type logic. What is missing is the second question: what was worked on, and does the client's budget still hold. Project time is not listed in the package overview. MetronHR books every hour against client, project and activity, stores hourly rates and shows budget usage as a traffic light.
Client allowances with renewal and carry-over
For businesses that sell services as an hour package, say 20 hours of maintenance a month with unused time carried over, Papershift has no tool. MetronHR keeps allowances per client, shows usage with a progress bar, renews them automatically at the turn of the period and prepares the invoice.
Joining and leaving as a workflow
Papershift knows workflows for approving duty rosters, but no process for employees joining or leaving. The contract, access, equipment, mandatory instruction, probation review and the way back on leaving all stay on a list outside the system. MetronHR sets them up as a reusable workflow and assigns them automatically.
Price comparison
Papershift bills per employee and additionally a support contract that, per the pricing page, is a mandatory part of every package. Example: a business with 15 employees.
| Service | MetronHR | Papershift |
|---|---|---|
| Time tracking, absences, personnel file | Team 5 euros per person, so 75 euros | Core 4 euros per person, so 60 euros |
| + duty planning and working-time models | Professional 10 euros per person, so 150 euros | Premium 6 euros per person, so 90 euros |
| + premiums and pay types | included in Professional, at no extra charge | Professional 9 euros per person, so 135 euros |
| Support contract | Email support included in the price, no flat fee | Basic 39 euros a month, per the pricing page a mandatory part of every package |
| Total for 15 people with planning and premium calculation | 150 euros a month | 135 euros plus 39 euros, 174 euros a month in total |
| Project time with client and budget, client allowances, onboarding workflows | included in Professional | not available |
| Open API | REST API v1 and webhooks from Professional, Entra ID on every plan | only in the Enterprise package, on request |
Time tracking, absences, personnel file
- MetronHR
- Team 5 euros per person, so 75 euros
- Papershift
- Core 4 euros per person, so 60 euros
+ duty planning and working-time models
- MetronHR
- Professional 10 euros per person, so 150 euros
- Papershift
- Premium 6 euros per person, so 90 euros
+ premiums and pay types
- MetronHR
- included in Professional, at no extra charge
- Papershift
- Professional 9 euros per person, so 135 euros
Support contract
- MetronHR
- Email support included in the price, no flat fee
- Papershift
- Basic 39 euros a month, per the pricing page a mandatory part of every package
Total for 15 people with planning and premium calculation
- MetronHR
- 150 euros a month
- Papershift
- 135 euros plus 39 euros, 174 euros a month in total
Project time with client and budget, client allowances, onboarding workflows
- MetronHR
- included in Professional
- Papershift
- not available
Open API
- MetronHR
- REST API v1 and webhooks from Professional, Entra ID on every plan
- Papershift
- only in the Enterprise package, on request
Prices per papershift.com/preise, retrieved on 2 September 2026, per employee per month. According to Papershift the support contract runs for a year, whether payment is monthly or annual. For teams up to 15 employees Papershift additionally offers „Papershift Light“, whose price is not on the page. Both providers offer a 14-day trial.
No credit card needed · cancellable monthly
FromPapershift moving to MetronHR
Your data comes with you.Papershift 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
AtPapershift export
- Time records as CSV or Excel, on request the whole period rather than just the entries displayed
- Billing exports with time records, absences and reporting data, per person as CSV or for everyone as Excel
- 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 fromPapershift according to Papershift help, Excel and CSV, 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 Papershift to MetronHR.
Papershift quotes Core 4 euros, Premium 6 euros and Professional 9 euros per employee per month. On top comes a support contract that Papershift lists on its pricing page as a mandatory part of every package: Basic 39 euros, Plus 99 euros or Expert 399 euros a month, with a one-year term. For 15 people with duty planning and premium calculation that is 135 euros plus 39 euros, 174 euros a month in total. MetronHR costs 150 euros for the same size on Professional, with no support fee and cancellable monthly. As at 2 September 2026.
With complicated shift logic and a lot of premium calculation: hospitality, retail, manufacturing, care, logistics. Fully automatic duty roster filling by rules, employee-specific public holidays and individual premiums for night, Sunday and public holiday work are mature at Papershift. You pay for that depth: Papershift lists the support contract on its pricing page as a mandatory part of every package, from 39 euros a month with a one-year term. For 15 people with duty planning that is 174 euros against 150 euros at MetronHR on Professional, with no flat fee and cancellable monthly.
Papershift promises „GDPR-compliant data storage (EU hosting)“, but names neither a country nor a data centre nor an operator. The list of sub-processors is available for download as an annex to the data processing agreement. MetronHR runs at Hetzner Online GmbH in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, a German company with no US parent; that is named in the Trust Center.
Project time tracking with clients, projects and activities, project budgets with a target-actual traffic light, client-bound hour packages and onboarding and offboarding workflows. Papershift in turn goes deeper on automatic shift filling and premium calculation; at MetronHR the personnel file and onboarding are included in the plan, with no support fee.
Yes. Papershift names data portability expressly as one of its data protection objectives and provides standardised exports for it, on the Professional package across all sites too. From those you carry over master data, hour balances and holiday and overtime balances. Note the one-year term of the support contract; it continues independently of the software package.
Question not answered here? Every step is explained in the help centre.
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