§ The result
SmartRecruiters leads Personio on 6 of the 7 criteria.
SmartRecruiters finishes 22 points clear of Personio inside the ATS-integrated cohort under rubric v1.0: 62 (D) against 40 (F). SmartRecruiters leads 6 of the 7 criteria and the remaining criterion is level, so Personio is ahead on none of them; the closest of the 6 SmartRecruiters leads is Data Governance Disclosure, Personio 52 to SmartRecruiters 62. Bias Audit Transparency is both the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing — Personio 25, SmartRecruiters 78 — and at an 18% weight it carries 43% of the weighted advantage SmartRecruiters holds across the 6 criteria on that side of the table.
Vendor profile
Personio
Personio is a European cloud HR platform for small and mid-sized companies that combines an HRIS with recruiting/ATS, time tracking, payroll and an AI assistant, and is adding agentic AI candidate sourcing and application screening through its 2026 acquisition of aurio.
Vendor profile
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters is an enterprise applicant tracking system and talent acquisition suite whose AI layer (the Winston assistant plus SmartAssistant/Winston Match) screens, ranks, and matches candidates to requisitions to support recruiter decisions.
§ The record
Personio and SmartRecruiters are both filed under ATS-integrated AI. They also share 2 secondary categories: Screening and Sourcing.
Both are in scope of EU AI Act, NYC LL 144, Colorado AI Act and Illinois HB 3773.
| Record | Personio | SmartRecruiters |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Enterprise |
| Headquarters | DE | US |
| Founded | 2015 | 2010 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 43% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Personio 25 · SmartRecruiters 78
9.5 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
20% weight · 71% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Personio 40 · SmartRecruiters 70
6.0 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
15% weight · 81% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Personio 30 · SmartRecruiters 45
2.3 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
12% weight · 88% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Personio 48 · SmartRecruiters 62
1.7 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
15% weight · 95% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Personio 52 · SmartRecruiters 62
1.5 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
8% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Personio 50 · SmartRecruiters 63
1.0 weighted points to SmartRecruiters
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 6 figures above sum to -22.0 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 22.0 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -22 beside that -22.0.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Personio minus SmartRecruiters.
| Category | Weight | Personio | SmartRecruiters | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 40 | 70 | -30 | -6.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 25 | 78 | -53 | -9.5 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 30 | 45 | -15 | -2.3 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 52 | 62 | -10 | -1.5 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 48 | 62 | -14 | -1.7 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 48 | 48 | - | - |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 50 | 63 | -13 | -1.0 |
| Total | 100% | 40 (F) | 62 (D) | -22 | -22.0 |
§ Evidence
Cited sources and documented absences, criterion by criterion.
An absence is a finding, not a blank: the reviewer looked for a named artefact and recorded that it is not located. Where a source sits is a fact about hosting only.
| Criterion | Weight | Personio | SmartRecruiters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 2 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 0 | Audit reportSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 2 | 0 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 1 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 13 | 8 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 11 | 2 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Personio has 20 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 13 with a source URL, 8 documented absences; SmartRecruiters has 13 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 11 with a source URL, 2 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Personio and SmartRecruiters sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 33 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 20 for Personio, across 5 distinct source domains, and 13 for SmartRecruiters, across 2 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Personio last reviewed
- August 2, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- SmartRecruiters last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
HireAIScore scores are editorial research, not legal advice, and no vendor pays for placement, scoring or removal — see the methodology, conflicts policy and terms.
§ Where next