The Personio alternative with project time tracking
HR and real project time in one tool, with transparent prices, no minimum term and no annual prepayment.
All information about Personio comes from the official provider pages. As at:2. September 2026.
Features in detail
Sources and notes (10)
- 1. Personio, Traffic-light account (warning levels with an automatic alert): The overtime balance can be shown as a column in the employee overview and coloured by thresholds you set yourself. The automatic alert is missing: asked about an email to managers from 40 hours, Personio answers in its own community that this cannot currently be automated (community.personio.de, post „Überstundenampel/Hinweis“, retrieved 14 September 2026).
- 2. 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.
- 3. Personio, Shift and duty planning / roster: No native shift planning, available only through external marketplace integrations.
- 4. Personio, Project time tracking / budgets: Working time can be split across projects, without separate fields for client and activity.
- 5. Personio, Allowances / hour packages: Personio creates projects in the settings and releases them for time tracking; reporting runs through the attendance report with a filter per project. A client as a separate object, an hour package per client and renewal with carry-over are not part of it (Personio help on project-based time tracking, checked 3 September 2026).
- 6. Personio, Analytics & reports: Reports and analytics are included; native, multi-dimensional project and client reports are limited, however.
- 7. MetronHR, Application hosted in Germany: The application and customer data run at Hetzner Online GmbH in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, exclusively in Germany.
- 8. Personio, Application hosted in Germany: In its own privacy policy Personio promises the European Union, not Germany. A data centre in Germany is promised nowhere.
- 9. 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.
- 10. Personio, Hosting operator without a US parent company: The operator is Amazon Web Services, a US group. The application at app.personio.de is delivered via Amazon CloudFront.
~ = 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. Personio 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
Personio
- Server location of the application
- AWS data centres in the European Union. A location in Germany is not promised.
- Operator and legal jurisdiction
- Amazon Web Services, a US group. The application is delivered via Amazon CloudFront. Personio Corp in the USA is also involved as a group company.
- Processors outside Germany
- The full list of processors is visible only after logging in to the Personio account. The privacy policy names Personio Corp in the USA, based on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
- Source
- Personio privacy policyabgerufen 08/2026
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
Project time with client and activity, for which Personio needs third-party tools
Personio's time tracking is built primarily for attendance and working time records (compliance with the Federal Labour Court ruling). A simple split of working time across projects exists as standard, but separate fields for client, project and activity are missing. More demanding requirements are in practice often covered with an additional project time tool, so a second licence, duplicate master data and duplicate maintenance. MetronHR brings project time tracking with a stopwatch, budgets, activity categories and client hourly rates out of the box.
Client allowances with auto-renewal, not provided for by Personio
Personio does not know the concept of a „client with an hour package“; in Personio community forums consulting and agency users report that project and working time cannot be recorded separately and that a second tool is needed for client-related budgets. MetronHR offers client-bound allowances with a periodic reset (monthly or quarterly), roll-over of unused hours and a usage view per client directly in the system.
Transparent prices from 5 euros, instead of a custom offer and a 12-month commitment
Personio officially publishes no list prices (only a „custom offer“). Market reports (Wise, trusted.de, Finom) quote ranges from about 2.88 euros per employee for the base package depending on plan and module mix; modules such as recruiting or payroll are priced individually only. Minimum term: 12 months, annual prepayment, 3 months' notice, automatic renewal for a further 12 months. MetronHR shows all plans openly: 5 euros per user on Team, 10 euros per user on Professional, cancellable monthly.
Ready in 5 minutes, instead of 2 to 5 months of implementation
Personio officially communicates a rollout in under 6 weeks with a dedicated customer success manager. For large organisations that guided process makes sense; for 10 to 50 people it is often more than necessary. MetronHR is productive in 5 to 10 minutes: register, invite employees, get going.
Price comparison
Personio publishes no list prices; here is the comparison of terms.
| Service | MetronHR | Personio |
|---|---|---|
| List price | 5 euros Team, 10 euros Professional, in full on the pricing page | no public prices ("custom offer") |
| Contract term | terminable monthly | 12-month minimum term, paid annually in advance |
| Setup fee | none | individual, not quantified publicly |
List price
- MetronHR
- 5 euros Team, 10 euros Professional, in full on the pricing page
- Personio
- no public prices ("custom offer")
Contract term
- MetronHR
- terminable monthly
- Personio
- 12-month minimum term, paid annually in advance
Setup fee
- MetronHR
- none
- Personio
- individual, not quantified publicly
Terms per trusted.de, as at 06/2026. Personio quotes prices only on request.
No credit card needed · cancellable monthly
FromPersonio moving to MetronHR
Your data comes with you.Personio 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
AtPersonio export
- The employee list via Employees, export list, with the fields of your choice
- Company data export as a ZIP: one file with all employee data as CSV, one with the documents
- 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 fromPersonio according to Personio support, export company data, retrieved on06.09.2026.
At the time: Personio ties you in for twelve months and requires three months' notice. The export is possible at any time; the contract sets the switch date.
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 Personio to MetronHR.
MetronHR is aimed at small and mid-sized teams of about 5 to 100 employees that want to centralise HR and project time in one tool, with transparent prices, no minimum term and no sales process. The Professional plan covers most mid-market requirements, at the same price per user whether you have 10 or 100 employees.
MetronHR fully covers time tracking, absences, personnel files, onboarding workflows, working-time models and compliance with the Working Time Act and the Federal Labour Court ruling, plus real project time tracking with clients, activities and budgets as well as client-bound allowances with auto-renewal. Specialist topics such as an integrated applicant tracking system, performance and development or a payroll module of its own are not part of the core scope. For payroll you export hours, overtime and absences as Excel or CSV.
Personio officially publishes no list prices; the pricing page points to a „custom offer“. Third-party sources quote the following ranges (all to be read with caution): according to Wise, Core starts from 2.88 euros per employee and Core Pro from 4.43 euros per employee per month; trusted.de and Finom report ranges of 5 to 15 euros per employee depending on plan and module mix; add-ons (recruiting, payroll, performance) are often above that. On top come a one-off setup fee (amount depending on size and modules, not publicly quantified), a 12-month minimum term, annual prepayment and automatic renewal for 12 months. MetronHR is openly priced: 5 or 10 euros per user, cancellable monthly.
As standard only rudimentary: working time can be split across projects, but separate fields for client, project and activity are missing. Anyone billing hours to clients needs either an additional project time tool, or MetronHR directly with native project time tracking.
Personio officially communicates a rollout in under 6 weeks with a dedicated customer success manager, a guided process that makes sense for large organisations but is often more than necessary for smaller teams. MetronHR relies on self-service with preconfigured defaults, productive in 5 to 10 minutes, with more complex setups (shifts, groups) in half a day.
Both offer native iOS and Android apps with time tracking, absence requests and HR self-service. Personio's app covers attendance, holiday requests and self-service. The MetronHR app additionally brings a project stopwatch, activity selection and client booking, built for daily use on the road, in the workshop and at a client meeting.
Question not answered here? Every step is explained in the help centre.
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