Leapsome drafts the review and your managers own the rating

Should you buy Leapsome Performance Reviews?

What Leapsome does in a review round

Leapsome Performance Reviews runs the review round. An admin sets a default rating scale first, then builds the questionnaire and starts the round. Reviews can come from managers, peers and the employee. A project review swaps each person’s manager for a named project manager. Contractors and clients can act as peer reviewers. Admins can weight questions so some count more in the overall score. The AI questionnaire builder cannot set up custom rating scales.

A round can add an approval step. A primary manager’s assessment then needs sign-off before the employee sees the feedback. Rating review meetings, called calibration, let managers and HR adjust ratings before they are final. These meetings are off by default in new templates and rounds, so an admin has to switch them on. Giving a reason for changing a rating is optional. Review analytics can include a nine-box grid, which places each person by performance and potential.

The Review Assistant is a chat inside the review form. It guides the reviewer in a chat and writes a draft they can edit. It never submits an answer on its own. It reads the reviewer’s private notes about the person, along with their goals, past reviews, and peer and self reviews. It also reads their job title, level and hire date, and draws themes from anonymous peer answers. It uses only data the reviewer can already see.

Nudges ask managers and employees to save private notes through the year, and the assistant reads them at review time. Once five data points have built up over three months, a one-click draft appears. Each one-click draft carries an AI label and a source line, such as private notes, meeting transcripts or peer feedback.

In a rating review meeting, the AI suggests a score and gives a reason for each question. Accepting a suggestion updates the score and adds a note. Nothing applies until a committee member accepts. The AI also writes a summary with flags for each committee group. It uses the current round and up to three finished rounds. Admins can leave that setting off in any round.

A manager can click AI summary to summarise the written comments for one direct report. The summary reads the rating as well as the answers. If a manager has summarised the feedback, admins and cycle owners can open the summaries too. Employees can summarise their own feedback only after the manager has shared it. AI Assist rewrites a reviewer’s text into more constructive comments. An admin setting lets the AI draft a development plan, or a performance improvement plan, from a review.

Leapy answers staff questions about policies and review preparation from the company’s documents. Leapsome also has two AI agents. The Development Coach prepares managers before 1:1s and reviews, and coaches employees. The PeopleOps Partner carries out multi-step processes and hands the sign-off to a person.

Changes in Workday, BambooHR, Personio, HiBob, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP and Rippling appear in Leapsome automatically. Leapsome connects with 100+ tools. It supports custom links through an API, which lets two programs share data. It also supports SFTP, a secure file transfer. Slack and Microsoft Teams send reminders about open tasks such as reviews. Implementation usually takes one to four weeks.

A Content API pulls reviews, goals, payroll, time tracking and employee data into other systems. Leapsome also has an MCP link, still in beta. MCP is the Model Context Protocol. It lets outside AI tools, such as a chat assistant, work with Leapsome data. It can help draft reviews and does not submit them. Write access is off by default and must be switched on for each area.

Leapsome is one of many products in this market. Our guide to performance management software starts with the whole market. The comparison page puts every product in one place.

What Leapsome does well

Who uses Leapsome today

Leapsome GmbH of Berlin makes Leapsome. It ran on its own money from 2016. It raised USD 60 million in its first outside funding round, reported on 24 March 2022. Insight Partners led the round, with Creandum and Visionaries Club taking part.

What Leapsome costs, and how you leave

Leapsome charges one price per employee per month, with no setup fees. Performance Reviews costs EUR 7 at list price. That comes to EUR 700 a month for every 100 employees, before the platform fee.

The platform underneath is always part of the plan, so you cannot buy one product without it. Leapsome calls it the Agentic HRIS Foundation. HRIS means HR information system. Leapsome’s pricing page puts it at EUR 7, struck down to EUR 0 for a purchase by 31 December. Its price estimator puts it at EUR 5 and EUR 0 per employee per month. The two figures differ, so ask which applies. It is free with any Talent Suite product until 31 December.

Suppose the platform costs EUR 5 or EUR 7 after 31 December. Performance Reviews and the platform then cost EUR 1,200 or EUR 1,400 a month per 100 employees at list. The platform includes AI at a limited level. Agentic HRIS Pro costs EUR 10 per employee per month. It removes the Foundation’s limits. It adds full custom attributes, advanced approvals, advanced analytics, unlimited e-signatures, advanced AI agents and advanced links to other systems.

Engagement Surveys, Goals & OKRs and Learning cost EUR 4 per employee per month at list. OKRs means objectives and key results. Compensation and Time Tracking cost EUR 3. Recruiting costs EUR 5. The Agentic HR Accelerator Program costs EUR 24,000 one-time at list. It is free if you sign by 31 December.

These are list prices. Discounts depend on how many products you buy and how many employees you have. Leapsome’s team puts exact figures in the quote, and its estimator gives list prices only. Trial accounts run 14 days unless a Leapsome representative agrees another period. A test environment is available after a consultation.

After the contract ends, you have 30 days to download user data as a CSV file or a similar format. A CSV file opens in a spreadsheet. Leapsome then keeps the data inactive for as long as the law requires, and deletes it. Under the data processing agreement, you can choose deletion or return of all personal data. Before you leave, admins can download an Excel sheet with every answer for each participant. They can also bulk download review reports as PDFs. Employees can export the feedback they received. An admin can delete a review round and its reviews.

What to ask Leapsome before you sign

1. Your pricing page gives one platform price and your price estimator gives another. What do we pay after 31 December, and can you put it in the order form? Good answer: A price per employee in writing, held for the full term.
2. What does “limited” AI in the platform mean, feature by feature? Good answer: A list of the AI features included, with any caps.
3. Can we lower the licence count at renewal, and can licences added mid-term be removed? Good answer: Yes at renewal, with the count written down and no automatic minimum from mid-term additions.
4. Will users arriving through an HR system link count towards the bill before they log in? Good answer: Only people who are granted access count, and the order form confirms it.
5. In the EU, which Article 6(3) condition do you rely on for your AI drafts and score suggestions? Have you registered the system in the EU database under Article 49(2)? Good answer: A named condition and a registration answer, with the reasoning in writing for a legal adviser to read.
6. Which AI features send data to a provider outside the EU, and where does it go? Good answer: A named list of features, a named country and the 30-day prompt retention in writing.
7. Can we stop the assistant reading Slack messages, and how do we tell staff what it reads? Good answer: Yes. We can leave one of the three required settings off, and you give us a staff notice we can adapt.
8. Will you cap the 5% renewal rise and carry our discount into the renewal term? Good answer: A cap and the discount both named in the order form.
9. Your uptime promise is a 99.5% average over the year. Is there any remedy if you miss it, and do AI outages count? Good answer: A repayment schedule in the contract, with AI outages counted.

Alternatives to Leapsome

The alternatives are Culture Amp, 15Five, Betterworks, Lattice, Risely’s Merlin or buying nothing.

Culture Amp Perform streamlines the review process, manager and employee communication and goal alignment. Perform is priced by quote. Pricing depends on the number of employees, the product and the service tier, and all products are billed annually. AI Coach in Performance is available on subscriptions that include Performance Cycles.

15Five Perform costs $11 per user per month, billed annually. Its Total Platform costs $16. AI-Assisted Reviews left beta on 17 September 2026 and is in the Total Platform and Perform & Goals packages.

Betterworks offers a Performance package at $8 per user per month, with AI assistance included. Performance + Talent Intelligence costs $9 and adds anytime calibration. Implementation is a one-time cost on top. Betterworks adds the most value for organisations with over 500 employees.

Lattice Performance costs $10 per seat per month, with a $4,000 minimum annual agreement. Evidence-based review drafts come with every Lattice Performance subscription at no extra cost. Lattice bills in USD only. Its seat count includes invited users. It does not refund a seat when a customer reduces its user count after growing.

Risely’s Merlin does a narrower job than Leapsome. It runs no review round, so you would still need another way to run the round. Merlin is Risely’s AI coach. It helps managers draft performance review feedback based on their company’s standards and guidelines. A manager can upload feedback they have already drafted, and Merlin coaches them on aligning it with those guidelines. It also coaches managers on giving constructive feedback. An admin sets up the company’s feedback guidelines in Risely. The manager writes the feedback and gives the rating. Merlin coaches the wording and leaves the rating to the manager. Review-feedback coaching is part of Risely’s enterprise plan.

Buying nothing means running reviews with what you use today. It avoids a contract that renews for 12 months. A 14-day Leapsome trial is available if you want to test the product before you decide.