A side-by-side look at how Connecting Odds and XING compare.
| Feature | Connecting Odds | |
|---|---|---|
| Free professional profile | Yes, unlimited | Yes |
| Connection-gated direct messaging | Unlimited DMs to your network | Premium membership for full DMs |
| Algorithm-free feed | Chronological, no boosted posts | Mixed, algorithmic recommendations |
| One-click apply with resume | Built in, free | Free with friction |
| Company pages + followers | Yes | Yes |
| Recruiter dashboard | Free for small teams | Paid seats |
| Privacy-first profile | Granular visibility per field | Public by default |
| Mobile + over-the-air updates | Yes via Capacitor + OTA | Native only |
No DACH-only events, jobs or pricing tiers.
XING gates inbox features behind Premium.
We ship improvements to the app every week without a store review.
XING has roughly 22 million members in 2026, concentrated almost entirely in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. For recruiters and job seekers inside that bubble, XING remains a serious tool, German-language UX, region-specific employer brand pages, and a salary database tuned to the local market.
Outside DACH the experience falls apart. Job inventory is thin, the network graph in your function is small, and the UX expects you to read German marketing copy. Most non-DACH professionals who set up a XING profile in the past five years quietly stopped logging in within a quarter.
Connecting Odds was built English-first with full localization support and treats every country as a first-class market. The job board, company pages, and search index don't penalize candidates or employers based on geography.
For a German professional looking to work in London or remote-EU, that means a single profile covers both, instead of maintaining a XING profile for DACH employers and a LinkedIn profile for everyone else.
XING gates a lot of its inbox and search features behind XING Premium and ProJobs. To message many recipients, see who viewed your profile, or unlock advanced search you need a paid tier.
Connecting Odds keeps DMs free within your connection graph and provides advanced recruiter search on the free recruiter dashboard for small teams. Privacy controls are more granular: hide specific fields from specific audiences rather than 'public or premium-only'.
DACH recruiters tell us their main XING use case in 2026 is the ProJobs candidate database. The user experience around contacting candidates and tracking responses is dated, and integration with modern ATS tooling (Personio, Workday, Greenhouse) is patchy.
Connecting Odds offers free recruiter search, a clean candidate inbox, and direct exports to common ATS systems. For DACH-specific roles you can still cross-post to XING; for everything else, and for remote roles especially, Connecting Odds is the cleaner default.
XING's mobile apps update on store cycles. Feature changes can take weeks to reach users. Connecting Odds ships over-the-air updates to its Capacitor-based mobile app, so improvements land within hours of being deployed.
Day-to-day this matters most in the inbox and notifications, where the gap between web and mobile parity stays narrow.
If you're hiring senior local talent in Munich, Vienna, or Zurich, keep your XING profile up. The local recruiting community still uses it. Treat it as a presence channel rather than a daily app and put your real day-to-day on Connecting Odds.
For everyone else, remote-first roles, English-language hiring, and any professional working outside DACH, the move in 2026 is to make Connecting Odds your primary and keep XING as a passive secondary.
Yes, fully international, GDPR-aware, available in every market. Profiles, jobs, and DMs work identically in the DACH region.
Free covers everything most professionals need. Paid tiers unlock advanced recruiter and company features.
Yes. XING is concentrated in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Connecting Odds is a credible XING alternative anywhere, including the UK, Benelux, Nordics, North America, and Asia, with an English-first UX.
You can export your XING profile as PDF and copy the structured fields. A one-click XING import is on the roadmap.
Yes. Job posts and search work in any language; salary, location, and seniority filters are language-agnostic.
Connecting Odds is GDPR-aware end-to-end. Granular per-field privacy controls, a clean data-export and account-deletion flow, and EU-compatible hosting options are part of the product.