# craftworks vs Waterglass

> Two top-rated AI Development agencies in Vienna. 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/craftworks-vs-waterglass
Generated: 2026-09-17 · Curated by Gabor Kiss · No paid placements — inclusion, score, and rank are never sold.

## Facts
| | craftworks | Waterglass |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | 61.8/100 | 43.3/100 |
| Hourly rate | not published | not published |
| Team size | 10-49 | 10-49 |
| Location | Vienna, Austria | Vienna, Austria |
| Founded | 2014 | 2024 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-09-07 | 2026-08-04 |
| Services | AI Development, Generative AI | AI Agents, AI Automation, AI Consulting, AI Development, Generative AI |
| Industries | Manufacturing, Healthcare | — |

## Our take on craftworks
Reviewed 2026-09-07 by Gabor Kiss against published evidence.

Delivery evidence sits in the navio product line—published success stories describe visual-inspection systems running on production lines with measured outcomes, and navio itself is an MLOps platform with model retraining, blue/green deployment, out-of-distribution detection and edge rollout to Azure IoT and TTTech Nerve.

Names and numbers sit on different pages: VERBUND, Wien Energie, voestalpine and ZKW Group are quoted by name and role in testimonials, while the recent success stories describe "a leading industrial manufacturer" or "a large energy plant operator".

The team page lists 38 people including named engineers, and the AI-sovereignty page addresses on-premise deployment, the EU AI Act and NIS2 directly rather than as a footnote.

The weaker fit is buyers outside industrial operations, or anyone who needs the model architecture named before signing—published detail on the vision work stops at "AI-powered models".

### Key strengths
- Published outcomes carry numbers: 94% accuracy classifying bearings with 82% precision on defect type, 72% faster package inspection, 60% less time on manual toolkit checks
- navio covers the operational side most AI suppliers leave out—retraining, shadow deployments, data-drift and out-of-distribution monitoring, with deployment to edge hardware
- The VERBUND engagement is documented as a multi-year rollout, extended to the Drau and Malta power plant groups, linking their AKS measurement database to their GAMS optimization engine

### Good to know
- The success stories with the strongest numbers are anonymized—ask which named client each deployment belongs to and for a reference you can speak to
- No rates published; anchor against the European range on our rate index and clarify whether navio is licensed separately from the delivery work
- Generative AI is listed as a service but no success story documents a generative deployment—ask for one with an outcome if that is your project

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

Four named clients are published—InStaff, notus, HHLA Next and Heylog—but each is a single line rather than a case study, and the "read case study" links did not resolve at review.

The stronger evidence is the venture side, which is verifiable independently: Notehouse, a HIPAA-compliant case-management product used by 250+ organizations and acquired in 2025, and Pxl, a QR and microsite builder with 100 million interactions now being rebuilt as an agentic business.

The site is unusually straight with buyers—it states plainly that there is no Munich office and that on-site work means travel, which is the kind of answer most agencies bury.

Best for DACH businesses that want an AI agent built, run and hosted in Europe by a team that also builds and operates its own products.

### Key strengths
- Operates what it builds—monitoring, model changes and new requirements are named as an ongoing service, not a handover
- European hosting with model residency in Germany or the EU on request, documented per data flow
- Two acquired products of its own, so the AI-build claim is testable outside client references

### Good to know
- Client work is published as one-line summaries with no reachable case studies—ask for a reference you can speak to
- The company is recently formed and publishes no headcount; ask who would staff the build
- Vienna-based and open about it: on-site days in Germany mean travel, remote for the rest

## Which to choose
Choose craftworks for:
- disclosed specialization in Manufacturing / Healthcare
- a higher overall editorial score

Choose Waterglass for:
- broader service offering — also covers AI Agents and AI Automation
- an overall editorial score of 43.3/100

## Questions buyers ask

### Which scores higher overall, craftworks or Waterglass?
craftworks scores 61.8/100, 18.5 points higher than Waterglass at 43.3/100. Both portfolio quality and business credibility feed into the score — see our methodology for the full breakdown.

### When should I consider both craftworks and Waterglass?
Consider running parallel discovery briefs with craftworks and Waterglass 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