DATEVvs
Lexware
Lexware: If you want to keep German bookkeeping in-house on a product you buy directly, with published prices
DATEV
German accounting, payroll and tax software built around the tax adviser rather than the business
As of 31 August 2026, DATEV's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. DATEV is a members-owned cooperative in Nuremberg whose software runs a large share of German bookkeeping, payroll and tax filing. Softwr lists it under Accounting. DATEV is made by DATEV eG, available on Windows, Web.
Overview
What DATEV does
DATEV eG is a registered cooperative founded in 1966, owned by its roughly 40,000 members, who are tax advisers, auditors and lawyers rather than ordinary businesses. Its catalogue covers financial accounting, payroll (Lohn und Gehalt), annual accounts, tax return preparation, cash books, document management and the DATEV Unternehmen online portal that companies use to hand receipts and bank data to their adviser. What distinguishes it commercially is the ownership structure and the channel that follows from it. DATEV is not trying to sell to you, it is trying to serve the adviser who serves you, and product decisions follow the German professional workflow and the ELSTER, GoBD and DSGVO obligations that come with it. That makes it very hard to leave: your bookkeeping history, chart of accounts (SKR03 or SKR04) and payroll records sit in your adviser's DATEV installation, and switching accounting software usually means switching adviser too, or paying them to work in something they do not know. Buyers are German Mittelstand companies, plus their tax firms. The trade off is that DATEV is built for German statutory practice first and modern software conventions second. Interfaces are dated, several modules still assume a Windows desktop, and if you operate outside the German-speaking market you will run a second system alongside it. DATEV publishes a Preisliste PDF but the effective cost you pay is set by your adviser as part of their fee, not by DATEV.
What people use it for
- A German GmbH that wants its Steuerberater to keep doing the books but wants receipts to stop travelling in a shoebox
- A payroll department that must file social insurance and wage tax returns to German statutory deadlines without an external bureau
- An SME preparing an e-Bilanz and audit-ready GoBD document archive
- A tax firm standardising dozens of client engagements on one chart of accounts and one document workflow
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of DATEV
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- DATEVvssevdesk
sevdesk: If you are a small German business that wants browser-based invoicing and bookkeeping and only sends a DATEV export to the adviser
- DATEVvsSage 50
Sage 50: If you need German-compliant desktop accounting but want a vendor that sells to you rather than through your adviser
Pricing
What DATEV costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
DATEV Unternehmen online
On request
- Receipt and bank data exchange with your tax adviser
- Cash book and master data modules
- Ordered and usually rebilled through the adviser
DATEV Mittelstand
On request
- In-house financial accounting and invoicing
- Payroll modules licensed separately
- Per-workplace licensing
Lohn und Gehalt
On request
- German payroll runs and statutory electronic filings
- Priced by number of payslips
- Typically operated by the adviser on the client's behalf
Capabilities
Features
Unternehmen online
Client portal for uploading receipts, bank transactions and cash book entries to the adviser
Lohn und Gehalt
German payroll including social insurance, wage tax registration and electronic returns
Rechnungswesen
Double-entry financial accounting on SKR03 and SKR04 standard charts of accounts
Jahresabschluss
Statutory annual accounts and e-Bilanz submission to the tax authority
DATEV DMS
Audit-safe document archive meeting GoBD retention rules
Meine Steuern
Client-side collection of personal income tax documents for the adviser
DATEV-Schnittstelle
The export format that nearly every German ERP and invoicing tool implements for adviser handover
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from DATEV
- DATEV alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- DATEV pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- DATEV badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Accounting softwareThe full category
- Best Accounting softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Accounting software for
Compare DATEV with
- Sage 50
- Lexware
- sevdesk
- Paychex
- QuickBooks
- ADP
- Bill.com
- FloQast
- Xero
- Zoho Books
- Money Forward Cloud
- RazorpayX
- Conta Azul
- Creem
- Dinero
- Divvy
- Dodo Payments
- Empower
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for DATEV, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on DATEV
DATEV alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
DATEV pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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