Comparison
Factorial 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 Factorial is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.
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.
Factorial, as publicly positioned, September 2026
Factorial presents itself as all-in-one HR software for small and mid-sized businesses, born in Spain and strongest in Europe while extending further, spanning time tracking, leave, documents, performance and the employee lifecycle, with payroll capability and payroll-adjacent tooling that feeds providers by market, and a marketplace of integrations around it. The published shape is one broad HR platform for an SME, bought per employee.
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.
One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what Factorial does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.
Factorial, as publicly positioned, September 2026
An established SME all-in-one with a broad feature set across the lifecycle and a marketplace of pre-built integrations built up around it.
Capstan, published on this site
Capstan is newer and narrower on purpose: people, employment, leave, attendance, documents, workflows, onboarding, self-service and reporting are the core on every plan including the free one, and the rest of the fourteen modules are included on every plan at no extra charge. Integration is signed outbound webhooks, with a delivery log and per-attempt inspection, and no connector marketplace.
Factorial, as publicly positioned, September 2026
Payroll is published as part of the platform, with its own capability and provider integrations that vary by market.
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.
Factorial, as publicly positioned, September 2026
A European SaaS platform serving customers across the continent and beyond, with data protection material describing where customer data is hosted.
Capstan, published on this site
One isolated region, the EU today, settled before signup 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.
Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: Factorial’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.
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.
Factorial’s answer
Ask them, and get it in writing.
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.
Factorial’s answer
Ask them, and get it in writing.
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.
Factorial’s answer
Ask them, and get it in writing.
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.
Factorial’s answer
Ask them, and get it in writing.
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.
Factorial’s answer
Ask them, and get it in writing.
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.
Factorial’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 Factorial: tell us and we correct it or take it down.
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 Factorial is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.
The part that costs us the sale
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.
You need a long list of pre-built connectors working on day one. Capstan integrates through signed webhooks and has no connector marketplace.
You want one vendor to run payroll as well as hold the record. Capstan compiles inputs for a payroll partner and computes no statutory payroll, in any country.
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.
