# Adastra vs Faculty

> Comparing AI Consulting options: Frankfurt vs London. Side by side: published rates, team size, service and industry coverage, and the curator's assessment of both — pairings are never sold.

Canonical page: https://www.aiagencies.eu/compare/adastra-vs-faculty-ai
Generated: 2026-09-17 · Curated by Gabor Kiss · No paid placements — inclusion, score, and rank are never sold.

## Facts
| | Adastra | Faculty |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | 74.8/100 | 73.3/100 |
| Hourly rate | not published | not published |
| Team size | 250+ | — |
| Location | Frankfurt, Germany | London, United Kingdom |
| Founded | 2000 | 2014 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-04 |
| Services | AI Consulting, AI Development, Generative AI | AI Consulting, AI Development, AI Automation, AI Agents, Generative AI |
| Industries | FinTech, Manufacturing, Public Sector | Public Sector, Healthcare, Legal, FinTech |

## Our take on Adastra
Reviewed 2026-09-16 by Gabor Kiss against published evidence.

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 SageMaker, delivered inside a Microsoft Teams channel, and a print-bundling optimizer for GZ Media that went from proof of concept to a production application with errors reported down to zero.

Depth across the rest of the library is uneven: much of it is Power BI, Microsoft Fabric and Databricks reporting work rather than AI, the Magna Bohemia planning story is written in the future tense with no measured outcome, and the GZ Media headline states a six-month ROI that its own body describes as the proof of concept's projection.

The weaker fit is buyers who want a small senior team on one model end to end—the pattern here is platform and governance work staffed from a practice the site puts at more than 150 AI specialists across six countries.

### Key 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

### Good to know
- 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

## Our take on Faculty
Reviewed 2026-08-04 by Gabor Kiss against published evidence.

Published case studies show systems that survived scrutiny most agencies never face—the NHS AI Lab's model-validation process for clinical AI, deployed generative-AI tooling inside Tide's support operation, and an LLM-backed recommender that now sources 25% of Axiom Law's hires.

The published work index spans defense, energy, insurance, and government, though many entries are anonymized or brief.

Rates are not published and the engagement profile is institutional—expect procurement-grade process rather than a lightweight pilot.

The weaker fit is a small team wanting a fast, inexpensive proof of concept; this bench is built for work where failure has consequences.

### Key strengths
- Published 10% ticket-handling-time reduction at Tide, with the deployed tools named (AgentAssist, MemberSummarise on Amazon Bedrock)
- Applied AI since 2014 with an in-house fellowship talent pipeline—delivery here predates the LLM wave
- NHS England's deputy director of AI is quoted crediting the validation work in the published study

### Good to know
- Much of the work index is anonymized (military, challenger bank)—ask for a speakable reference in your sector
- No published rates; budget for institutional procurement timelines

## Which to choose
Choose Adastra for:
- larger team capacity for multi-stream or enterprise-scale programs
- disclosed specialization in Manufacturing

Choose Faculty for:
- closer collaboration at a smaller team scale
- disclosed specialization in Healthcare / Legal
- broader service offering — also covers AI Automation and AI Agents

## Questions buyers ask

### Which has more FinTech experience, Adastra or Faculty?
Both agencies show documented FinTech work. Faculty has the broader industry stack overall, with disclosed experience in Healthcare, Legal beyond their shared focus.

### Which scores higher overall, Adastra or Faculty?
Adastra scores 74.8/100, 1.5 points higher than Faculty at 73.3/100. Both portfolio quality and business credibility feed into the score — see our methodology for the full breakdown.

### When should I consider both Adastra and Faculty?
Consider running parallel discovery briefs with Adastra and Faculty 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.

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Source: AIAgencies.eu — the curated register of European AI agencies. Rate provenance: "agency-confirmed" = disclosed via submission or claimed profile; "directory-listed" = Clutch or two agreeing B2B directories (lone unverified sources are never written). Full method: https://www.aiagencies.eu/methodology · Rate index: https://www.aiagencies.eu/rates