Comparison updated
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 | Faculty | Hiflylabs |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | Higher score: 73.3/100 | 61.8/100 |
| Hourly rate | Contact for rates | Contact for rates |
| Team size | Larger team: 250+ | |
| Location | London, United Kingdom | Budapest, Hungary |
| Founded | 2014 | 2015 |
| Last reviewed | Aug 4, 2026 | More recent review: Sep 3, 2026 |
What we said about each
Our take on Faculty
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…
Reviewed Aug 4, 2026
Read the full assessment →Our take on Hiflylabs
The named LLM-era work is the reason to read the case studies: Billingo's text-to-SQL and RAG agent went from proof of concept through pilot to full production on OpenAI, Snowflake and OpenSearch with prompt anonymization via MS Presidio, and Erste Bank's agentic RAG knowledge base on LangGraph and Azure AI Search reports 200-plus documents processed and 40% higher answer accuracy. The older classical work carries the hardest numbers—MOL Group's location-based pricing showed 3. 87% gross-margin…
Reviewed Sep 3, 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 Faculty if you need
- closer collaboration at a smaller team scale
- disclosed specialization in Public Sector / Healthcare
- broader service offering — also covers AI Agents and Generative AI
- a higher overall editorial score
Choose Hiflylabs if you need
- larger team capacity for multi-stream or enterprise-scale programs
- disclosed specialization in Manufacturing
Strengths and watch-outs
Both upsides and risks, straight from our editorial assessments.
Faculty
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
Watch-outs
- 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
Hiflylabs
Strengths
- Stack is listed on every study—LangGraph, MLFlow, Azure AI Search, Databricks Apps, HuggingFace, MS Presidio—so a technical buyer can check the architecture before the first call
- Third-party standing is visible: FT1000 listing, Databricks, Snowflake Select and AWS Select partner tiers, and 50-plus Databricks-certified staff per the homepage
- Named testimonials with names and titles at Catylex, MOL Group, Cirkul, Adaptive Recognition, Semilab and Billingo, and an engineering blog dated from 2020 through August 2026 with named authors
Watch-outs
- The 99% analysis-time cut and the 6x ROI belong to anonymized clients—ask for a speakable reference behind each
- The homepage claims 500-plus projects and 200-plus clients against roughly 25 published case studies—ask for the list in your vertical
- Semilab and Adaptive Recognition are named proofs of concept—confirm what has run in production since, and who operates it
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 Legal experience, Faculty or Hiflylabs?
- Both agencies show documented Legal work. Faculty has the broader industry stack overall, with disclosed experience in Public Sector, Healthcare beyond their shared focus.
- Which scores higher overall, Faculty or Hiflylabs?
- Faculty scores 73.3/100, 11.5 points higher than Hiflylabs at 61.8/100. Both portfolio quality and business credibility feed into the score — see our methodology for the full breakdown.
- When should I consider both Faculty and Hiflylabs?
- Consider running parallel discovery briefs with Faculty and Hiflylabs 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.