Shapes and Peepel are the two most architecturally ambitious AI-native HRIS platforms in the market - and they answer a fundamentally different question about what AI should do inside HR.
If you are weighing both, the fastest way to see the execution model in action is to book a demo - 30 minutes is enough to judge whether Peepel removes work you would otherwise still perform inside Shapes.
How they compare.
Peepel charges one fixed price: €9.50 per employee per month, with all modules and digital signing included and no setup fees.
| Peepel | Shapes | |
|---|---|---|
| Core design principle | Execution engine (work removal) | AI augmentation (work assistance) |
| AI architecture | Ground-up AI-native | AI-native |
| Starting price | €9.50/employee/month | $8/employee/month (public list) |
| Transparent pricing | ||
| Best company size | 10-2,000 employees | Not publicly specified |
| Natural-language execution | Yes - executes | Partial - assists |
| Proactive AI insights | Yes - surfaces and flags | Partial - on request |
| Social secretariat (BE/NL) | Via Sodeco (Attentia, Besox) | Not confirmed |
| GDPR / EU hosting | ||
| ISO 27001 |
What Shapes does well.
Shapes deserves genuine credit. Founded by an experienced team from monday.com and backed by roughly $24M, it is one of the few HRIS platforms in the world designed from scratch with AI at the centre rather than retrofitted on top of a legacy system.
The modular architecture is a real differentiator: customers install only what they need, and internal teams or developers can build additional agents and workflows on top of an open SDK. Pricing is transparent at $8 per employee per month, all features included. Shapes serves customers across a broad international footprint (79 countries and 14 industries per its own materials).
If you are evaluating modern HRIS platforms, Shapes belongs in the conversation.
Where Shapes falls short for European SMEs.
Augmentation, not execution.
Shapes is built around augmentation. AI makes HR tasks faster, smarter and better-informed - but the tasks still exist. Your HR team still runs them. The AI becomes a better tool in the hands of your HR team.
Peepel is built around removal. A leave request arrives, Peepel checks availability, applies policy, routes the approval and pushes the update to payroll. The HR manager is notified when it is done, not asked to perform each step. That gap - assisting work versus executing it - is the same axis we describe in the 4 levels of HR software. It is not "better", it is a different level.
The initiative still starts with the HR team.
Shapes' AI assistant answers questions, drafts content and surfaces patterns on request. That is genuinely useful. But the system waits to be engaged: the work that no one asks about does not get done. Peepel monitors your HR data continuously and acts on standing instructions and detected patterns without a prompt.
Belgian and Dutch payroll are not a native loop.
Shapes has not publicly confirmed native integrations with Belgian or Dutch social secretariats. For SMEs in these markets, the most operationally critical monthly task - payroll - would sit outside the automation boundary. Someone on your team bridges the gap. Every month.
What Peepel does differently.
Built to execute, not to assist.
Every workflow in Peepel is designed around one question: can this run autonomously, or nearly so? Onboarding, leave, contract generation, payroll prep, performance cycles - each runs with minimal HR intervention. Your team manages exceptions, not processes.
Proactive intelligence that acts.
Peepel does not just answer questions. It flags that three hires into the same team have pushed a manager beyond your span-of-control policy - before the fourth offer goes out. It notices that 38% of eco vouchers are unclaimed and calculates the reallocation value. It matches current employees against the behavioural profile of employees who left within 18 months. None of these required a query.
Connects with social secretariats on Sodeco.
Peepel connects with social secretariats on Sodeco, such as Attentia and Besox, and closes the payroll loop for those platforms - contract changes and payroll mutations flow through without manual export. This depth is not a checkbox feature; it is evidence that an execution-first platform has to finish the hard part of the loop, not just the convenient part.
When to choose Shapes.
Shapes is the right choice if your company operates across many countries and you want a globally consistent, AI-native HR platform; if you have engineering resources to build custom applications on an open HR SDK; or if your HR team wants the best possible AI tools to do their work faster and smarter, and native Belgian or Dutch payroll depth is not a hard requirement.
When to choose Peepel.
Peepel is the right choice if the goal is not to make HR work smarter - but to have less of it. If you want a platform that acts rather than assists. If proactive insight and autonomous task completion matter more than a broad feature set. And if you operate in Belgium or the Netherlands, where Peepel connects with social secretariats on Sodeco, such as Attentia and Besox.
If that matches how you want HR to run, book a demo and we will walk you through your own scenarios live.
Related reading.
Peepel vs. Personio · Peepel vs. HiBob · Peepel vs. Deel · Peepel vs. Factorial · Best HRIS for European SMEs
