Paygaps.de
Paygaps.de is a German pay-gap platform for HR and payroll teams: it scores jobs against the four EU criteria, computes raw and adjusted gaps, builds salary bands and produces the statutory annual report. Payroll data stays in Frankfurt.
What is Paygaps.de?
Paygaps.de is a German software-as-a-service platform for measuring, correcting and documenting the gender pay gap. It exists for one regulatory deadline. EU Directive 2023/970, whose German transposition is expected on 7 June 2026, shifts the burden of proof onto the employer: from that date a company must be able to show that its pay differences are not discriminatory. Reporting duties then arrive in waves. Employers with 250 or more staff report first in June 2027 on 2026 data and annually thereafter; 150 to 249 employees report in 2027 and then every three years; 100 to 149 from 2031, every three years.
The product answers that with nine modules, all included from the entry-level Starter plan: pay-gap analysis, analytical job evaluation, the §10 information-request portal (Auskunftsverlangen, an employee's statutory right to ask what comparable colleagues earn), the annual report, salary bands, a new-hire check, a portal for the Betriebsrat (the German works council), a compliance score and an adjustment workflow.
The method is published in the open on a dedicated page, which the vendor sums up as keine Black Box. Jobs are scored analytically against the four EU criteria, Kompetenz (skills), Belastungen (effort), Verantwortung (responsibility) and Arbeitsbedingungen (working conditions), using fourteen sub-criteria shipped by default whose weightings the customer can change. The point totals form the comparison groups. The adjusted gap is then computed by regression analysis within work of equal value, neutralising comparison group, experience and part-time work through full-time-equivalent normalisation. Department and job family are deliberately not neutralised, on the stated grounds that doing so would hide gender segregation rather than explain it. Salary bands are treated as a target to be set, not a figure derived from current salaries.
AI plays a supporting role: assisted job evaluation and a conversational assistant, with Anthropic (Claude) named as the main model provider, and results presented as indications rather than verdicts. Payroll data is hosted in a Frankfurt data centre, and a tamper-proof, fully timestamped audit log is kept for the reversed burden of proof. The publisher is a small Wiesbaden operation that claims a single named contact instead of a ticket system, and that declines to give legal advice.
What it does
- Connect payroll data through DATEV, Personio, Workday, Sage HR, SAP SuccessFactors or a CSV/Excel import
- Score every role against the four EU evaluation criteria and let the software form the comparison groups
- Calculate the raw and the adjusted pay gap, with an automatic alert past the 5% threshold
- Set and publish min/median/max salary bands for each comparison group
- Handle employee information requests under §10 EntgTranspG (the statutory right to ask what comparable colleagues earn) with automatic deadline tracking
- Produce the statutory annual PDF report and keep a tamper-proof, timestamped audit log
- Test the effect of a planned hire on the gap before the offer goes out
When to use Paygaps.de / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Paygaps.de is the right fit.
When to use Paygaps.de
- HR and payroll teams at German employers, which the vendor says makes sense from 50 employees upwards
- Companies of 250 to 1,000+ staff caught by the staged reporting duties of EU Directive 2023/970 and by the reversed burden of proof from 7 June 2026
- Groups with subsidiaries that need a consolidated dashboard, multi-tenant separation and drill-down per entity
- Works councils (Betriebsrat, the German employee representation body), provisioned by the contract as named users of their own protected portal
- Consultancies and payroll departments already running DATEV Lodas or DATEV Lohn und Gehalt that guide employers through pay-transparency compliance
When not to use Paygaps.de
- Consumers and private individuals: the terms apply exclusively to businesses within the meaning of §14 BGB (the German Civil Code definition of an entrepreneur) and rule out consumer use
- Buyers looking for a free plan or a short commitment, since there is no permanent free tier and the minimum term is twelve months whatever the billing frequency
- Organisations that require an on-premise deployment, which the terms explicitly place outside their scope
- Developers and teams needing a public API or a mobile app: neither exists, it is a web application only
- Employers outside Germany, and anyone expecting legal advice, since the law, the wording and the payroll integrations are German and the vendor formally excludes legal advice
How to use Paygaps.de
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Book the 45-minute demo on the demo page, or ask for the 14-day trial, which needs no payment details
- Expect a signed offer rather than a checkout: the contract only comes into being when you expressly accept an individual offer in text form, nothing is sold online
- Connect your payroll data: DATEV over OAuth2 with a single authorisation and then automatic sync, Personio and Sage HR with an API key, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors through an Enterprise setup, or CSV/Excel with assisted field mapping
- Evaluate the jobs: HR and the line manager score together on sub-factor scales, with a justification field for each factor
- Let the software build the comparison groups from the point totals, then read the raw and adjusted gaps per role and per group
- Act on what the analysis shows: action plans for groups past the 5% threshold, documented adjustments and progress tracking
- Open the §10 portal so employees can file their own information requests, and answer inside the two-month statutory deadline the software tracks for you
- Give the Betriebsrat its protected portal, with aggregated statistics and comment threads but no individual data
- Prove it: generate the annual PDF report and keep the tamper-proof audit log for the reversed burden of proof
- Lean on the named contact person who accompanies you from the first import through to reporting readiness
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Narrow specialisation in German law and the EU directive, with precise article references (Art. 4(4), 5, 7 and 9; §7, §10 and §13 EntgTranspG) rather than generic compliance talk
- The calculation method is published in full on a dedicated page, the weightings can be changed by the customer, and the refusal to over-neutralise (department and job family are left in) is argued rather than hidden
- Payroll data hosted in Germany (Frankfurt), an Article 28 processing agreement, and every sub-processor named one by one
- AI training on customer data is contractually excluded, the assistant ships disabled by default, and individual salaries, names and personnel numbers are never sent to the model, with a minimum group size enforced by the software
- Every module and every listed integration is included from the entry plan, with no hidden add-ons
- A dedicated Betriebsrat portal, a topic most comparable tools leave out entirely
- Public, itemised pricing and a 14-day trial that needs no payment details and ends automatically instead of converting
Cons
- Twelve-month minimum term with tacit twelve-month renewal and three months' notice in text form, even when you pay monthly
- No permanently free plan, and an entry ticket of EUR 249 per month net of VAT
- No contractual SLA: the terms only say availability is aimed for, with no figure committed
- No public API and no mobile application
- A very young, very small publisher: a sole proprietorship declaring 2 to 10 staff and 21 followers on LinkedIn, with no founding date verifiable in any public register
- No security certification in the publisher's own name, the ISO 27001 quoted on the site being the data centre operator's
- Site and contract documents are in German only even though the product advertises English, and the German transposition of the directive was still unfinished at the time of review, as the site itself states
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanently free plan. A 14-day trial is offered without payment details and ends automatically rather than converting into a paid contract. All prices are net figures excluding statutory VAT and are reserved for business customers under §14 BGB. On monthly payment the entry point is EUR 249 per month (Starter), followed by EUR 499 (Business) and from EUR 899 (Enterprise). On annual payment the same plans cost EUR 2,490, EUR 4,990 and from EUR 8,990 per year, described as twelve months for the price of ten, which works out at an equivalent EUR 208, EUR 416 and EUR 749 per month and a saving of EUR 498, EUR 998 and EUR 1,798 a year. Readers should note that the pricing page opens on the annual view, so EUR 208 is the first figure displayed while the actual monthly ticket is EUR 249. A minimum term of twelve months applies whichever frequency is chosen. Invoicing is in advance by SEPA direct debit, card or transfer, payable within 14 days. Headcount and user seats are ceilings: beyond them the next plan applies. An additional subsidiary on Enterprise costs EUR 1,490 per year, and Enterprise is also available on quotation through the contact form.
- EUR 249 per month or EUR 2
- 490 per year
- up to 250 employees and 2 user seats
- CSV and Excel import plus all the listed HR integrations
- automated four-factor job evaluation
- job architecture
- salary band export
- pay-gap analysis
- EUR 499 per month or EUR 4
- 990 per year
- everything in Starter plus up to 500 employees
- 5 user seats
- the Paygaps assistant
- the employee information portal
- the Betriebsrat portal and special integrations on request
- from EUR 899 per month or EUR 8
- 990 per year
- everything in Business plus up to 1
- 000 employees
- one subsidiary included and EUR 1
- 490 per year for each additional one
- multi-tenant separation and unlimited user seats
- the site's llms.txt also lists Microsoft Entra ID SSO and a dedicated account manager
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Paygaps.de handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is concrete and documented. German law applies, with Wiesbaden as the venue for merchants. An Article 28 processing agreement is a compulsory part of the contract, with annexes covering sub-processors and technical and organisational measures. Legal bases are cited page by page: Article 6(1)(b), (f) and (a) GDPR, §25 TDDDG for cookies, §26 BDSG for job applications. Sub-processors are named one by one: IONOS SE (hosting, Germany), Supabase Pte. Ltd. (Singapore, storage in Frankfurt), Plus Five Five, Inc. trading as Resend (USA), Cloudflare (Turnstile), Stripe Payments Europe (Dublin), Google Ireland (GA4), Microsoft Ireland (Clarity) and Anthropic for the AI models. Non-EU transfers rely on standard contractual clauses and the EU-U.S. adequacy decision of 10 July 2023. Data subject rights are listed, and security is stated as TLS 1.3, AES-256 and role-based access with MFA. No Article 27 representative applies and no DPO is named; the contact is datenschutz@paygaps.de.
Who owns the data?
The terms define Kundendaten (customer data) as the pay data, master records and job evaluations the customer enters, and they stay the customer's. Paygaps.de acts only as a processor under Article 28 GDPR, and a data processing agreement is a mandatory part of every contract. The customer can export at any time in CSV, PDF and DOCX, and may request a complete export within thirty days of the contract ending. What the customer receives in return is a simple, non-transferable right to use the software for its own business needs, which lapses with the contract. The customer remains responsible for the lawfulness of the transfer and for the accuracy of what it uploads.
Reuse rights
Customers can take their data back out whenever they want, in CSV, PDF or DOCX, and reuse it without asking permission: no approval step sits between them and their exports, and a full export remains available on request for thirty days after the contract ends. Their right over the software itself is narrower, being simple, non-transferable, limited to their own business needs and extinguished with the contract. On the vendor's side reuse is fenced in. Training AI models on customer input is contractually excluded. Only the user's own input and aggregated organisation-level indicators are sent to the model, on request; individual salaries, names and personnel numbers never are, and the software enforces a minimum group size. The conversational assistant can be switched off and ships disabled by default. Model calls may take place outside the EU under EU standard contractual clauses and, where available, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and AI output is presented as supporting guidance that does not replace a professional or legal check. Website analytics (GA4, Microsoft Clarity) run only with consent.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Payroll data processed by the platform sits in a data centre in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; the terms state that processing takes place in principle in EU data centres in Frankfurt. The public marketing site is hosted separately by IONOS SE in Germany, the apex resolving to 87.106.151.62, an IONOS address in Germany, with DNS delegated to Vercel and mail on Google Workspace. Contact, demo and job-application forms are handled by Supabase Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) but stored in Frankfurt, under an Article 28 processing agreement and EU standard contractual clauses. The site describes its data centres as ISO 27001-certified; that certification is the data centre operator's, not the publisher's. Processing outside the EU is limited and named: operational logs, support, transactional email and AI model calls, covered by EU standard contractual clauses and the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Encryption is stated as TLS 1.3 in transit and AES-256 at rest.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Paygaps.de.
- Compliance is not proof. The vendor formally excludes legal advice and presents AI output as guidance, so leaning on the compliance score or on AI-assisted job evaluation as if it settled the matter could give false comfort exactly where the burden of proof has been reversed
- The pricing page opens on the annual view, so the first figure you see is EUR 208 per month; the real monthly ticket is EUR 249, and a twelve-month minimum term with tacit renewal and three months' notice applies even on monthly payment
- The ISO 27001 certification mentioned belongs to the data centre operator, not to Paygaps.de: no certificate number, no certifying body and no certificate in the publisher's name is published, and there is no contractual SLA either
- The homepage figures are mock-ups, not results: the 85/100 score, the 8.2% gap, the 1,247 employees, "Muster Holding GmbH" and the named individuals are illustrations and should never be read as customer outcomes
- Concentration risk on a very small publisher: a sole proprietorship with no legal form, no commercial register entry and 2 to 10 people declared, a domain last changed in February 2026 and a first web archive capture in May 2026, weighed against a twelve-month renewable commitment
- You are uploading salary and master data. The contract leaves you responsible for the lawfulness of the transfer, for informing employees under Article 13 GDPR and for involving the works council; customer data is deleted 30 days after the contract ends, but no retention period is published for server logs or contact enquiries
- Two published details deserve a check before you sign: the VAT number DE450238730 has a valid check digit but VIES answered invalid on 2 September 2026 while the German service was working, and the site contradicts itself on which integrations Starter includes (site pages say all, llms.txt says DATEV only) and on demo length (30 minutes in places, 45 in others)
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low technically, demanding methodologically. Nothing to install: a browser-based SaaS. DATEV connects over OAuth2, one authorisation then automatic sync; Personio and Sage HR use an API key; Workday and SAP SuccessFactors go through an Enterprise setup; CSV/Excel import with flexible field mapping is the fallback. The site claims five minutes for the import against several days by hand, a sales claim, not a measurement. The real effort is scoring every job on four criteria and fourteen sub-criteria with written justification, HR and managers together, plus informing employees and involving the works council, both the customer's duty.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Paygaps.de
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What is the gender pay gap, and how does Paygaps.de calculate it?
How is the adjusted gap calculated?
What does EU Directive 2023/970 require of employers?
From when does it apply, and which company sizes report when?
How large does a company need to be for the tool to make sense?
Can we change the sub-criteria and weightings of the job evaluation?
What does it cost, and what is the minimum commitment?
Where is the data hosted, and is the software GDPR-compliant?
How does the DATEV integration work?
Is there an API or a mobile app?
Should you pick Paygaps.de?
Paygaps.de is a narrow tool built around a dated obligation, and it knows it. Its strengths are real and checkable: precise references to the directive and to German law (Art. 4(4), 5, 7 and 9; §7, §10 and §13 EntgTranspG), a calculation method published in full with weightings the customer can change, a documented refusal to over-neutralise, payroll data hosted in Frankfurt under an Article 28 processing agreement with every sub-processor named, AI training on customer data contractually excluded and the assistant switched off by default, every module and integration included from the entry plan, and a published price list that is still rare in this segment. The Betriebsrat portal is a genuine differentiator.
The reservations are just as concrete. The publisher is a sole proprietorship, very young and very small: no company form, no commercial register entry, two to ten people declared, a web presence only months old. Against that sits a twelve-month minimum term with tacit renewal and three months' notice, no contractual SLA, and no security certification in the publisher's own name, since the ISO 27001 quoted is the data centre operator's. There is no public API, no mobile app, and the site and contract documents are German-only even though the product advertises English.
For a German employer of 50 to 1,000+ staff that has to document its pay structure before June 2026 and report from 2027, the fit is strong and far more specific than a general HR analytics suite. For an organisation outside Germany, for anyone who needs an API, a mobile app or a short commitment, or for a buyer who requires the vendor's own security certification, it is the wrong tool. Take the trial, and treat the twelve-month term as the real decision.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.