Comparison updated August 2026
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 | DEPT | Lazy Ants |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | Higher score: 64/100 | 61.8/100 |
| Hourly rate | €130-170/hr | Lower published rate: €45-85/hr |
| Team size | Larger team: 1000-9999 | 10-49 |
| Location | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Frankfurt, Germany |
| Founded | 2016 | 2008 |
| Last reviewed | Aug 6, 2026 | Aug 6, 2026 |
What we said about each
Our take on DEPT
Signs is the most visible AI work here: a sign-language learning platform using computer vision to check the learner's signing, which reached more than 20 million people in its first week and recorded 20,000 signs learned in ten days. It is a collaboration with NVIDIA and the American Society for Deaf Children rather than a commissioned client project, which is worth knowing when you read it as evidence. The commissioned AI work is more ordinary and more useful as a guide: a return-value…
Reviewed Aug 6, 2026
Read the full assessment →Our take on Lazy Ants
Two production AI workflows, both named, both written up with more operational honesty than this register usually sees. For Eurekantine, weekly menu planning runs through retrieval before generation: dishes carry structured properties and a vector representation, recently used ones are filtered out, an intermediate step extracts keywords from the manager's request, and only the narrowed candidate set reaches the model. Planning time fell by up to 65%.
Reviewed Aug 6, 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 DEPT if you need
- larger team capacity for multi-stream or enterprise-scale programs
- broader service offering — also covers AI Marketing and Generative AI
- a higher overall editorial score
Choose Lazy Ants if you need
- a more cost-effective engagement (~131% lower rate)
- closer collaboration at a smaller team scale
- disclosed specialization in E-commerce
- broader service offering — also covers AI Automation and AI Consulting
Strengths and watch-outs
Both upsides and risks, straight from our editorial assessments.
DEPT
Strengths
- Named clients with figures attached across three sectors: retail returns, clinical search, sports fan engagement
- Computer vision applied to genuinely hard interaction problems, not generative demos
- International delivery capacity, so multi-market rollouts do not need a second agency
Watch-outs
- Signs is collaborative work with NVIDIA, not a client engagement—judge the commissioned cases separately
- Published AI work is weighted toward audience-facing products—ask for an operated system with an SLA if that is what you need
- At this scale, insist on knowing the named team, not the agency's aggregate credentials
Lazy Ants
Strengths
- Publishes the failure modes and the verification gate, not just the outcome—rare enough that it is the main reason to shortlist them
- Both client cases quantify the operational result and carry publication and update dates
- Ownership boundaries are named by role on both sides, which is what maintenance actually depends on
Watch-outs
- Two named-client AI engagements; the third case is their own internal tooling
- The RAG case is titled around cost and latency control while stating that infrastructure cost was never measured—read it as a planning-time result
- AI sits beside Web3 and e-commerce practices; confirm the AI team is the team you would get
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.
Pricing math
What a 12-week engagement at one full-time equivalent (~480hours) costs at each agency’s published rate. An arithmetic projection, not a quote — real scopes move with seniority mix and team shape.
DEPT
Rate: €130-170/hr
€62,400–€81,600
Lazy Ants
Rate: €45-85/hr
€21,600–€40,800
At this scope the published midpoints are about €40,800 apart, with Lazy Ants lower. DEPT publishes AI Marketing work that Lazy Ants does not — that is the one difference on this page that bears on the gap. If your brief does not touch it, the gap is buying something this comparison cannot see.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is cheaper, DEPT or Lazy Ants?
- Lazy Ants is cheaper by roughly 131% — €65/hr median vs €150/hr at DEPT. Published rates cover different things at different agencies — seniority mix, discovery and included revisions are the usual variables — so treat the gap as a question to ask, not a verdict.
- Which has more SaaS & B2B experience, DEPT or Lazy Ants?
- Both agencies show documented SaaS & B2B work. Lazy Ants has the broader industry stack overall, with disclosed experience in E-commerce beyond their shared focus.
- Which scores higher overall, DEPT or Lazy Ants?
- DEPT scores 64/100, 2.2 points higher than Lazy Ants at 61.8/100. Both portfolio quality and business credibility feed into the score — see our methodology for the full breakdown.
- Which is faster to engage, DEPT or Lazy Ants?
- Neither publishes lead times, so this is a read on team size rather than a measured answer. Lazy Ants runs the smaller team, which usually means fewer procurement gates and a shorter path to kickoff. DEPT runs a larger one, which tends to mean more steps but more capacity to start parallel workstreams. Current kickoff availability is the number that actually decides it — ask both.
- When should I consider both DEPT and Lazy Ants?
- Consider running parallel discovery briefs with DEPT and Lazy Ants 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.