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Personio vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Personio
Ranking in Cloud HCM
20th
Average Rating
5.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (7th), HR Analytics Software (8th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Talent Management (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Personio is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 9.0%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP SuccessFactors9.0%
Personio0.9%
Other90.1%
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

RT
Global Talent Acquisition Lead at Career Break
Offers strong HR features but recruiting module needs essential improvements
The analytics and reporting aspect in Personio for the recruiting part was below expectations compared to some other applicant tracking systems. It is clunky and cannot be tailored to specific needs. The reporting and analytics for the recruiting part are insufficient. The ability to filter applications based on filtering questions added to applications was missing in recruiting. Other recruiting software performs this function much better. Keyword searches within applicants' resumes in the database within recruiting were not possible. I brought this up with the Personio account manager and was told it was on the development list, but these are essential features for any recruiter. I would advise companies looking for an ATS and considering Personio to get a separate recruiting piece of software that can interface with Personio instead.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Personio provides an opportunity to set up structure with certain steps, creating a clear interviewing process, which resulted in hiring better candidates faster because having a system in place is better than having none."
"As an HR tool, Personio is really good; it is straightforward adding your organizational structure through it with the accounting codes so you can interface with many accounting modules and payroll modules."
"The role-based permissions functionality is beyond great (in my opinion) and is honestly more robust and flexible than any other security setup/process that we have with other business software that we use (and have the ability to maintain security roles with)."
"SuccessFactors' most valuable feature is performance management."
"The most valuable feature of SAP SuccessFactors is that it is a full suite of applications to enable your employees. Additionally, it has good integration with S4 HANA. Our payroll solution is from SAP and the integration becomes much easier when using SAP SuccessFactors."
"We like that all the employee events, everything, can be managed on one single system and it is very user-friendly and very agile."
"SAP SuccessFactors manages the journey of an employee from start to finish, and everything is managed within a single suite."
"SAP SuccessFactors, in my opinion, is the best cloud-based HR solution tool for any size business."
"We can design a quick and dirty solution or very complex services, we can manage small enterprise projects (in our experience 150 users) as the big organization (in our experience 40000 users), all with the same solution, and this is a big saving of time, costs, and team usage optimization."
"It is the best cloud product in the market, with strong support from SAP, which is a market leader in the world."
 

Cons

"Personio is not scalable as an ATS, and I struggle to work with it."
"The analytics and reporting aspect in Personio for the recruiting part was below expectations compared to some other applicant tracking systems."
"Its overall integration and user experience can be improved. SuccessFactors is a system that is built out of three different systems. The elements part was bought from Plateau, and the original performance dialogue was built by SuccessFactors itself. After that, SAP bought it, and it hasn't improved in the last few years. SuccessFactors is a perfect tool if you use it the way it is meant to be, but if you start building custom sessions and try to use it differently, then it is a total mess. It is not agile. It is like an old Mastodon truck or whatever. We don't have the Employee Central and Competence Management modules. Our company made the choice to not implement the Employee Central module. We also didn't implement the Competence Management module. We use the learning module to do some competence management, but I am not that fond of it. It would have been best to have the whole suite. SAP should never sell this without selling the whole suite because it just doesn't work. The biggest gain for me would be having the possibility of doing strategic personnel planning and managing internal mobility. If it could be used for social purposes, such as creating communities and connecting with media channels, that would be perfect. It should also have the possibilities for local admin and agile product development."
"They have a set of web services and connections to them. The libraries were not up-to-date and this contributed to the complexity."
"The integration with Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll needs improvement as the client is still considering on-premises solutions."
"One of the most essential features that needs improvement right now is the reporting functionality. SuccessFactors' reports seem to be lagging a bit behind and we are very interested in customizing the reporting mechanism such that it pushes reports through quickly and automatically."
"The back end for the administration and the front end is too overtly complex and it's not aligned with our operations and learning needs."
"The complete integration process between SuccessFactors modules is not at the level that all customers expect when it comes to complete HR user experience from all angles."
"I find that the website sometimes has problems loading, but I'm unsure if it's an issue with SuccessFactors."
"SAP SuccessFactors functionality doesn't meet the expectation of our end users. There are other solutions that have better functionality, such as Workday, which is one of the top applications. Additionally, the solution could be easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution depends on too many factors to provide an estimate. However, the price of SAP SuccessFactors is competitive."
"We are on an annual subscription to use SAP SuccessFactors. The pricing model is something that they could restructure a bit better. If it was based differently on the type of usage it would help."
"The pricing for SuccessFactors is ridiculously high, and there are costs in addition to the license fee for some features."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"Probably, it is one of the priciest products, and is very costly to put up and maintain but because it is a good solution end to end, people take it."
"This is a more costly solution than comparable products, and training is not available in the open-market, so this has to be purchased separately from the vendor."
"We don't utilize even half of the licenses because not everyone uses them. With SAP SuccessFactors, though, we're now conducting all our performance evaluations within the system, so I suppose we're making better use of those licenses. As for SAP for employee services and internal benefits processing, we do have licenses for those but don't utilize them."
"The price of the solution is highly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
21%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Personio?
I cannot provide information about the setup costs as I am not responsible for the financial aspects.
What needs improvement with Personio?
The screening of candidates in the ATS part is quite complicated. In Greenhouse, you can have a CV of one person on one page at a time, zoomed in immediately for easy screening. In Personio, it req...
What is your primary use case for Personio?
I'm a consultant, so I do in-house recruiting, embedded recruiting for various clients, and one of my clients is using Personio as their ATS, so that's how I work with it. As a recruiter, I primari...
What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orderbird, HelloFresh, Stylight, TURCK, HolidayCheck, ZenMate, Amorelie, UNU, raisin
City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skril
Find out what your peers are saying about Personio vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.