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Accounting · head to head

Circula vs DATEV

Circula logo

Circula

Accounting

Expense, travel and employee benefit management for German speaking finance teams

From
€15/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
DATEV logo

DATEV

Accounting

German accounting, payroll and tax software built around the tax adviser rather than the business

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Circula the module pricing stacks: expenses at fifteen euro per licence plus ninety nine euro for cards plus a hundred and forty nine euro for accounts payable means a fifty person company pays well over a thousand euro a month before add ons.; DATEV dATEV does not publish transparent per-customer pricing the way a SaaS vendor does; your real cost is buried in your tax adviser's fee note, so comparing it against Lexware or sevdesk on price is genuinely hard.
  • They diverge on capability: Circula covers German per diem engine, DATEV covers Unternehmen online.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Circula and DATEV actually diverge.

Attributes where Circula and DATEV differ
AttributeCirculaDATEV
Starting price€15/monthOn request
Pricing modelPer user per monthquote
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWindows, Web

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Accounting).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Circula

  • German per diem engine
  • Receipt capture and OCR
  • Corporate credit cards
  • Employee benefits
  • Accounts payable
  • Mileage and travel
  • DATEV and ERP export
  • Approval workflows

Only in DATEV

  • Unternehmen online
  • Lohn und Gehalt
  • Rechnungswesen
  • Jahresabschluss
  • DATEV DMS
  • Meine Steuern
  • DATEV-Schnittstelle

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Circula

  • A German company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposurenot DATEV
  • A finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one DATEV exportnot DATEV
  • An employer offering the tax free monthly benefit allowance and needing auditable records of itnot DATEV
  • A mid sized business replacing spreadsheet mileage claims with rule enforced distance calculationsnot DATEV

DATEV

  • A German GmbH that wants its Steuerberater to keep doing the books but wants receipts to stop travelling in a shoeboxnot Circula
  • A payroll department that must file social insurance and wage tax returns to German statutory deadlines without an external bureaunot Circula
  • An SME preparing an e-Bilanz and audit-ready GoBD document archivenot Circula
  • A tax firm standardising dozens of client engagements on one chart of accounts and one document workflownot Circula

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Circula

  • The module pricing stacks: expenses at fifteen euro per licence plus ninety nine euro for cards plus a hundred and forty nine euro for accounts payable means a fifty person company pays well over a thousand euro a month before add ons.
  • A minimum of ten licences excludes small teams, and the flexible licensing model for occasional claimants makes monthly cost harder to forecast than a flat per seat price.
  • Strength is in German tax rules, so companies with significant operations outside the DACH region gain little from the feature that justifies the price.
  • The accounts payable module includes only a hundred invoices per month, so invoice heavy businesses face metered overage on top of the platform fee.
  • Card issuing carries a per card transaction ceiling and depends on partner issuing, so high value procurement spend can hit limits that a bank issued corporate card would not.

DATEV

  • DATEV does not publish transparent per-customer pricing the way a SaaS vendor does; your real cost is buried in your tax adviser's fee note, so comparing it against Lexware or sevdesk on price is genuinely hard.
  • The board has decided to wind down the Austria-specific portfolio: existing products remain usable to 31 December 2028, are free of charge during 2029, and cannot be used after 31 December 2029, so any Austrian entity on DATEV has a forced migration dated in advance.
  • It is built for German statutory practice, so a group with subsidiaries outside the DACH region will run DATEV for Germany and something else everywhere else, with a consolidation step in between.
  • Large parts of the suite are still Windows desktop software installed on a workstation or terminal server, which means IT overhead most companies no longer budget for when they think they are buying cloud accounting.
  • The lock-in is social as well as technical: because your adviser holds the installation and the history, changing accounting software usually forces you to change or retrain your adviser, which is a far bigger decision than a software migration.

Pricing, plan by plan

Circula

€15/month
  • Employee and Travel Expenses$15/month
    • Per licence, billed annually
    • Minimum 10 licences
    • OCR receipt capture
  • Credit Cards$99/month
    • Platform fee, unlimited cards
    • Per card spend limits
    • Transaction limit of EUR 750,000 per card
  • Accounts Payable$149/month
    • Platform fee
    • Includes 100 invoices per month
    • Supplier invoice capture and approval
  • Benefits$1/month
    • Per licence
    • Tax free benefit allowances
    • Mobility and meal benefits

DATEV

On request
  • DATEV Unternehmen online$undefined/month
    • Receipt and bank data exchange with your tax adviser
    • Cash book and master data modules
    • Ordered and usually rebilled through the adviser
  • DATEV Mittelstand$undefined/month
    • In-house financial accounting and invoicing
    • Payroll modules licensed separately
    • Per-workplace licensing
  • Lohn und Gehalt$undefined/month
    • German payroll runs and statutory electronic filings
    • Priced by number of payslips
    • Typically operated by the adviser on the client's behalf

Which should you pick?

Choose Circula if

  • You need german per diem engine.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want receipt capture and ocr.
Circula review

Choose DATEV if

  • You need unternehmen online.
  • You work on Windows, Web.
  • You also want lohn und gehalt.
DATEV review

Questions people ask

Is Circula or DATEV better?
Neither clearly leads. Circula starts at €15/month and DATEV at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Circula or DATEV?
Circula starts at €15/month and DATEV at On request.
Does Circula or DATEV run on more platforms?
Circula runs on Web, iOS, Android. DATEV runs on Windows, Web.
What is Circula best used for?
Circula is most often used for a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure, a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export, an employer offering the tax free monthly benefit allowance and needing auditable records of it, a mid sized business replacing spreadsheet mileage claims with rule enforced distance calculations. Of those, a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure and a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export are not what DATEV is typically brought in for.
What can Circula do that DATEV cannot?
Circula covers German per diem engine, Receipt capture and OCR, Corporate credit cards, Employee benefits. DATEV covers Unternehmen online, Lohn und Gehalt, Rechnungswesen, Jahresabschluss.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Circula: Does Circula calculate German per diems automatically?

Yes, by destination country and trip duration, including meal and accommodation deductions, which is the main reason DACH finance teams buy it.

DATEV: Can I buy DATEV directly without a tax adviser?

In practice, no for most of the range. Membership of the cooperative is restricted to the tax and legal professions, and companies get access through their adviser or as a client of one.

Circula: What does it actually cost for fifty employees?

Roughly seven hundred and fifty euro a month for expense licences alone at the fifteen euro rate, before the ninety nine euro card platform fee and any accounts payable module.

DATEV: Is DATEV usable outside Germany?

It operates in Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, but the depth is German. The Austrian product line is being discontinued with a hard end date of 31 December 2029.

Circula: Is there a minimum commitment?

Yes. A minimum of ten licences and annual billing on the published rates.

DATEV: What is the DATEV-Schnittstelle everyone mentions?

It is the standard export format German invoicing and ERP tools produce so bookkeeping data can be handed to a DATEV-based adviser. Supporting it is effectively a requirement to sell accounting-adjacent software in Germany.

DATEV: Does DATEV handle e-invoicing under the German B2B mandate?

Yes, the accounting and invoicing modules were extended for the XRechnung and ZUGFeRD formats that the German B2B e-invoicing rules require.

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