Comparison updated · Newest review
Side by side
Published data on both agencies. Where one side measurably differs, the dot marks it: the higher score, the lower published rate, the larger team, the more recent review. Which of those is an advantage depends on your brief.
| Attribute | Adastra | Artefact |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | 74.8/100 | 74.8/100 |
| Hourly rate | Contact for rates | Contact for rates |
| Team size | 250+ | Larger team: 1000+ |
| Location | Frankfurt, Germany | Paris, France |
| Founded | 2000 | — |
| Last reviewed | More recent review: Sep 16, 2026 | Aug 5, 2026 |
What we said about each
Our take on Adastra
NLB is the study that settles the deployment question: the Slovenian bank put an agentic-AI control layer and its first use case into production in five months, with identity-based approvals through Entra ID, separated development, test and production environments, cost monitoring on Grafana dashboards and a published 80% cut in the time and cost of standing up each further use case. Two more named systems sit behind it—GenAI enterprise search for KWS on Amazon Bedrock, OpenSearch and…
Reviewed Sep 16, 2026
Read the full assessment →Our take on Artefact
The Bpifrance engagement is the one to read first. Artefact took agentic AI from experiment to scale across 500 employees at a public investment bank, and what came out of it was not one assistant but more than 1,500 individual agents built by the business teams themselves. That is a different claim from most agentic case studies, which describe a system rather than an adoption curve.
Reviewed Aug 5, 2026
Read the full assessment →Best for
Where each agency measurably leads on the published data — team capacity, declared specializations, editorial scoring, and rates where both publish them. Use these to match an agency to your project priorities.
Choose Adastra if you need
- closer collaboration at a smaller team scale
- disclosed specialization in Public Sector
- broader service offering — also covers Generative AI
Choose Artefact if you need
- larger team capacity for multi-stream or enterprise-scale programs
- disclosed specialization in E-commerce
- broader service offering — also covers AI Automation and AI Agents
Strengths and watch-outs
Both upsides and risks, straight from our editorial assessments.
Adastra
Strengths
- Client executives go on the record by name and title—NLB's CIO and AI architect, GZ Media's print production director, Magna Bohemia's CEO—so references are traceable before the first call
- German delivery is not a sales address: four offices with street addresses in Frankfurt, Wolfsburg, Munich and Hannover, a named German CEO and a named German AI lead
- The German-language index lists further AI engagements at E.ON, KUKA, ams OSRAM and Hyundai, so the German book is not one story deep
Watch-outs
- No rate is published anywhere read—ask for a blended day rate and for the split between German and Czech or Slovak delivery before comparing bids
- The 150-plus AI specialists and 20-plus years are the firm's own figures—ask how many sit in the German practice and who would staff your engagement
- Governance is the visible strength; if you need the model built and evaluated, ask for the evaluation method and accuracy numbers behind a delivered use case
Artefact
Strengths
- Agentic AI evidenced at adoption scale rather than pilot scale: 500 employees, then more than 1,500 agents emerging from the business itself
- Outcome figures published on the cases that carry them—two minutes for a market study, 15 points of revenue-prediction accuracy, seventy airports
- Over a hundred client pages published, so a buyer can find work in their own sector rather than accepting an analogue
Watch-outs
- 2,500 people across thirty-two offices—confirm which office delivers, who is named on the team, and how much is subcontracted
- Many of the published cases carry no numbers at all; the strong ones are strong, but the portfolio is uneven on outcomes
Service coverage
Where the two overlap, and where each covers ground the other does not.
Industry coverage
Where the two overlap, and where each covers ground the other does not.
Frequently asked questions
- Which has more FinTech experience, Adastra or Artefact?
- Both agencies show documented FinTech work and have similar industry breadth. Compare directly on the agency profiles: Adastra and Artefact.
- Which scores higher overall, Adastra or Artefact?
- Both score equally well overall (74.8/100). The deciding factor is specialization — see the editorial quotes and Strengths sections above. Full methodology.
- When should I consider both Adastra and Artefact?
- Consider running parallel discovery briefs with Adastra and Artefact if your project spans multiple workstreams, you want competitive proposals to compare scope and approach, or you're undecided between the specialization angles each brings (see the Best for cards above). Most engagements ultimately go with one — but the parallel-brief phase is a low-cost way to validate fit.
Read the full reviews
A side-by-side is a starting point. The full assessments carry the portfolio analysis, documented engagements, and the evidence behind every strength and watch-out above.