Selection guide

Personio alternatives for businesses with fewer than 50 employees

Personio publishes no list prices; here is the comparison of terms.

As at:September 2026

Where it gets stuck for smaller businesses

Personio is a mature HR platform and the right choice for many organisations. For businesses with fewer than 50 employees, though, four points regularly come up that have to do with size.

  • No list price: Personio quotes prices only on request. Comparing is therefore only possible after a conversation, and nobody knows what the business next door pays.
  • Commitment: a twelve-month minimum term, annual payment in advance, three months' notice, automatic renewal for a further twelve months.
  • Introduction: Personio names up to six weeks with a dedicated customer success manager. For ten people that is more process than the occasion warrants.
  • Project time: working time can be split across projects, but there are no separate fields for client and activity. Anyone billing services often adds a second tool.

Six alternatives with open prices

All details come from the providers' pricing pages, retrieved on 02/09/2026. The comparison assumes a business with 25 people needing a personnel file, absences and time recording.

  • MetronHR

    Price per person per month
    5 € Team, 10 € Professional
    Commitment
    terminable monthly
    What else to watch out for
    Personnel file, onboarding and project time in Professional; no setup fee, no payroll, no recruiting

  • Kenjo

    Price per person per month
    6 euros Starter, 10 euros Growth
    Commitment
    annual with a 10 % discount possible
    What else to watch out for
    Setup from a one-off 400 euros, DATEV connection a one-off 600 euros, recruiting as an add-on from 249 euros a month

  • Factorial

    Price per person per month
    from 8 euros, package tailored
    Commitment
    not public
    What else to watch out for
    a very broad toolkit, hosting "in the EU" with no country named

  • absence.io

    Price per person per month
    from 2.99 euros
    Commitment
    terminable monthly
    What else to watch out for
    Time recording and the personnel file only from Pro, the API only on the Complete plan

  • clockin

    Price per person per month
    3.59 to 8.99 euros
    Commitment
    1, 12 or 24 months selectable
    What else to watch out for
    Personnel file from Pro, shift planning as an add-on from 27 euros a month, platform flat fee of 10 euros with fewer than five users

  • Sage HR Suite

    Price per person per month
    modules from 21 euros a month
    Commitment
    12-month minimum term
    What else to watch out for
    Licensing in packages of 25 employees, but payroll in house

  • HRworks

    Price per person per month
    12.90 euros plus a base fee
    Commitment
    not public
    What else to watch out for
    Minimum purchase of 20 users, setup fee of 1,550 to 4,480 euros; effectively no offering for small businesses

For 25 people that gives 125 € on the MetronHR Team plan and 250 € on Professional, 150 euros at Kenjo on Starter and 250 euros on Growth plus 400 euros of setup, and from 74.75 euros at absence.io. Personio quotes no price for the same size.

Which alternative suits which need

The question is not which tool is best but what task is left over without Personio. Four patterns keep recurring at businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

  • HR work plus billable project time, all in one system and hosted in Germany: MetronHR.
  • HR work plus recruiting and people development: Kenjo or Factorial. Both cover what MetronHR does not.
  • Mainly leave and absence management, on a small budget: absence.io.
  • Trades and mobile teams with site documentation: clockin.

When Personio remains the right choice anyway

A comparison that only makes the competitor look bad is no help in making a decision. There are cases in which Personio is the more suitable platform even below 50 employees.

Anyone hiring heavily and needing a developed applicant management system with a careers page and analytics, anyone wanting to run people development and objectives in the same system, anyone with sites in several countries, or anyone looking for payroll within the product will find more there than with the alternatives above. The number of ready-made integrations with other systems is also greater at Personio.

The twelve-month commitment then weighs less heavily, because nobody switches after eight weeks anyway.

Further reading:Pricing pages of Personio, Kenjo, Factorial, absence.io, clockin, Sage and HRworks, retrieved on 02/09/2026 · Personio's terms according to trusted.de, as of 06/2026

Information about competitors comes from their publicly available pages and can change. This is not legal advice; for a specific case in your business it is better to ask someone with a licence to practise.

Frequently asked questions

What we get asked about this most often.

Personio publishes no price for that. The website points to an individual quote. Third-party sources name ranges from around 3 to 15 euros per employee per month depending on the plan and modules, plus a one-off setup fee whose amount is not public. The only solid figure is the quote you receive yourself. For comparison: MetronHR costs 125 euros for 25 people on the Team plan and 250 euros on Professional, as stated on the pricing page.

Under the publicly described terms: a twelve-month minimum term, three months' notice to the end of the term, otherwise the contract renews automatically for twelve months. In practice that means notice has to be given nine months after the contract starts. So plan the switch early and, if in doubt, let the systems run in parallel for a month.

Yes. Personio offers exports for master data, absences, times and documents, as well as an API. From those you carry the employee master data and the leave and overtime balances into the new system. What cannot be carried over is applicant data and performance processes where the target system does not hold them. From 30 employees we help with mapping the fields, at no extra charge.

By list price, absence.io at from 2.99 euros per person per month. That price applies to the entry plan, though; time recording and the personnel file only start there on the Pro plan at 4.99 euros, and the API on the Complete plan at 7.99 euros. So calculate with the plan that actually covers your needs, not with the entry price.

It varies, and that is a selection criterion. MetronHR runs at Hetzner Online GmbH in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, a German company with no US parent. Factorial promises "in the EU", with no country. Kenjo names "ISO 27001 certified servers", with no country. Personio names AWS data centres in the EU. A data centre in Europe does not remove the data from US law where the operator belongs to a US group.

That depends on how much HR work there is. Anyone keeping contracts, documents with expiry dates and joining processes in folders anyway and coping with that gets by with pure time recording, for instance Clockodo or Crewmeister. As soon as those documents are to be kept digitally, findable and with reminders, a personnel file is needed, and then one system is worth more than two.

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