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Comparison

Capstan and PayFit

PayFit is a serious product, and this page is not a scorecard. It sets out how each of the two is built, taking each side from how it is publicly positioned, and then gives you the questions worth putting to any vendor in this market, us included. Where PayFit is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.

What each one is built to be

Start here rather than with a feature list. Most of the difference between two HR products is decided before either one ships a feature, by what business the company is in.

PayFit, as publicly positioned, October 2026

PayFit presents itself as an automated payroll and HR platform for small and mid-sized businesses in Europe, born in France and strongest across France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany. The published offer puts payroll at the centre, computed inside the product for the markets it covers, with leave, expenses, time and the surrounding HR admin alongside it, and the statutory content maintained by the vendor as the rules change. The shape is one platform that automates payroll and HR for a European SME.

Capstan, published on this site

Capstan is an HR system of record for companies that employ their own people. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and the workflows around them, with the module suite included on every plan for the rest. It is not an employer of record, it computes no payroll, and it runs as a self-contained stack in one EU region live today, data in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam.

Set out in full on the product page, with the residency model on security and every figure on pricing.

Three structural differences

One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what PayFit does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.

  1. Who computes payroll

    PayFit, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    Payroll is computed inside the platform for the markets PayFit covers, with the statutory outputs that follow a pay run produced from it and the content maintained by the vendor as the rules change.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan prepares payroll and does not run it: inputs compiled into a documented export for your payroll partner, results filed back onto the employee record, and no statutory rate, slab or formula held anywhere in the product. In markets like France and Spain, where preparing inputs for an expert-comptable or gestoria who runs the payroll is the common model, that handoff is exactly what Capstan is built for.

  2. What the core spans, and how it travels between countries

    PayFit, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    An established European SME platform with payroll computed natively in each of the markets it publishes an edition for, and leave, expenses and time around it.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan is newer and narrower on purpose, and carries no statutory computation anywhere, which is what lets it be the same product in every country it runs in. People, employment, leave, attendance, documents, workflows, onboarding, self-service and reporting are the core on every plan including the free one, with the rest of the fourteen modules included at no extra charge.

  3. Where the product runs, and how residency is settled

    PayFit, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    A European SaaS platform serving customers across several countries, with data protection material describing where customer data is hosted.

    Capstan, published on this site

    One isolated region, the EU today, settled before signup because the app you sign into is your region, and permanent afterwards. A self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, data in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam, written on the security page rather than left to a questionnaire.

The six questions to ask any vendor, including us

Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: PayFit’s answers are theirs to give, and a comparison page that fills them in has stopped being a comparison. Ask them the same six, and set what you are told beside ours.

  1. Who employs our people, and who carries the liability?

    It decides who is on the contract of employment, who answers a labour authority, and what you are actually buying: a service that takes the employment on, or a system that records it.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    You do. Capstan is not an employer of record, never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster, and moves no payroll money. If you need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is a different kind of vendor.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  2. Who computes payroll, and whose name is on the filing?

    Computation and filing are where liability sits. A vendor that calculates and files is taking that on. A vendor that prepares inputs is not, and you need the second half of the arrangement in place before you rely on either.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    Not Capstan, by design. It compiles joiners and leavers, pay structures, leave, attendance and adjustments into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula, and files nothing with any authority.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  3. Where does our data live, and who inside the vendor can reach it?

    Residency is a property of where the database is, not of a promise in a policy. Support access is the same question from the other end: not whether staff would look, but whether the system lets them without you switching it on.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    One isolated region, the EU today: data in Frankfurt, compute in Amsterdam. It is a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, so there is no runtime path out of the region. Staff hold no tenant of their own, and access exists only while you have granted a time-boxed consent, masked by default and audited on both sides.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  4. What do we get on the plan we start on, and what changes as we grow?

    This is what growing costs you. If capability moves between tiers, the upgrade you eventually buy is largely software you were already being shown.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Paying lifts the cap and includes all fourteen modules at no extra charge, billed month to month with no annual contract and no lock-in. Every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  5. What happens to our data the day we leave, or the day a payment fails?

    Export is the price of leaving. Either it is written down before you join, or it gets decided at the moment you have the least leverage you will ever have.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    An owner can take a full export at any time: one archive of JSON and CSV, in open formats, with a documented manifest. Export deliberately sits outside the suspension check, so a workspace held for non-payment can still be exported. The export is not a dead archive either: it imports straight back into a fresh Capstan workspace, the people master proven to round-trip, which is the plainest proof there is no lock-in. Deletion is cryptographic erasure followed by hard deletion, with a residue scan.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  6. Does any software judge our people, and can the person see why?

    Whether software scores, ranks or screens people decides who is accountable for the judgement, and whether the person it was made about can be shown the reason.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    No AI scores, ranks or screens your people, and that is architectural rather than a promise: the agent capability registry is pinned in the database so it cannot hold a capability that evaluates a person, nothing of the kind is built, and the analytics engine can only ever narrow who sees what, with small groups suppressed. The useful AI is off until a workspace turns it on and is bounded by construction: an assistant answers from what the caller may already see, and an agent needs a named accountable human and an explicit human confirmation before it changes any record, can move no money, and can evaluate nobody. The one aggregate assistant that reaches out sends only non-personal figures, such as headcount by department, to our single AI sub-processor, OpenAI, which does not train on the data. No per-person or sensitive record is ever sent to an outside model or used to train one.

    PayFit’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

If an answer of ours turns out to be wrong, it is a bug and we will fix the page. The same standard applies to anything here about PayFit: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose PayFit if

This is the part of the page that makes the rest of it worth reading. If one of these describes you, the honest answer is that PayFit is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You are a European SME that wants payroll computed natively inside the platform for France, Spain, the United Kingdom or Germany, with the statutory content maintained by the vendor. Capstan hands computation to a partner permanently, so one vendor for both is the shorter path here.
  • You want one established product to automate payroll and the HR admin around it in the markets PayFit covers, and that market fit is the centre of what you want.
  • You would rather the payroll engine and the HR tool were the same company, so there is nobody to point at when a pay run is wrong.

The part that costs us the sale

Where Capstan is the wrong choice

Not a softened version of the section above. These are requirements Capstan does not meet and is not going to meet, written down so you can rule us out in a minute rather than in a quarter. If one of them is true of you, nothing else on this page matters.

  1. You want your HR software to compute and file payroll. Capstan prepares inputs for a payroll partner, or for your expert-comptable or gestoria, and computes no payroll in any country.

  2. Your team is concentrated in one of PayFit's markets and native in-country payroll is essentially the whole purchase. Capstan would be a system of record beside the thing running the pay.

  3. Your buying process requires a SOC 2 report specifically. Capstan holds an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate and no SOC 2 report, so if SOC 2 is the hard gate for you it is a hard gate.

That is the list as we understand it today. If you hit a limit that is not on it, tell us: a disqualifier we did not know about belongs here more than anything else on the page.

If nothing on this page ruled us out, run it yourself.

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