We'll say this up front: Ryz Labs wrote this page, and we're one of the options on it. We think we're the stronger pick for a specific kind of work, and we'll say where Cognizant is the better choice. Facts about other firms come from their filings and announcements, listed at the end.
Cognizant is a Teaneck, New Jersey company that reported $21.1B in 2025 revenue across four segments: Health Sciences, Financial Services, Products and Resources, and Communications, Media and Technology. It now calls itself "AI Builders" and sells the Neuro AI multi-agent accelerator and Agent Foundry, a framework plus implementation services for enterprise agents. Its 10-K reports about 351,600 employees. Buyers look at alternatives when they want a senior team that works their hours, in their repos, and builds one system to fit. For that, our pick is Ryz Labs. For large managed-services estates or healthcare payer platforms, Cognizant is often the right place to stay.
The question we hear most from teams comparing us with Cognizant is about working rhythm. Our AI pod teams work US business hours, including New York hours, so code review happens the same day and a design question at 2pm gets answered at 2pm. A typical pod is about seven senior engineers, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, sized to the job. They work in your cloud and repos, join your standups and show working software in a weekly demo. When the system is done, you can grow the pod, add disciplines, or take the whole system over.
Cognizant's accelerators, Neuro AI and Agent Foundry, give you reusable building blocks for agents. That suits buyers who want a framework and a vendor to run it. Our approach starts from your problem instead. A global capital management firm needed compliance review for its marketing materials and had two common choices: pay a systems integrator to customize Salesforce, or license a compliance SaaS platform. A Ryz pod that grew from zero to three engineers built exactly what the compliance team needed instead. It reviews 8,000+ marketing materials a year, review time fell from days to hours, and the firm avoided hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing. Read the marketing compliance case study and more case studies.
Before work starts you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who will build it, so the team you meet is the team you get. Only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers we've interviewed make it through our vetting process, and Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us with production work. We serve enterprises across industries, including financial services, logistics, real estate and software.
Our rates are public: mid-level engineers $7,000 to $10,000 a month, seniors $10,000 to $15,000, leads quoted per team. A four-person senior pod for six months is 4 × $10,000 to $15,000 × 6, or $240,000 to $360,000.
Where we're not the right fit: follow-the-sun coverage across Europe and Asia, a multi-year managed-services contract, or a packaged healthcare platform such as TriZetto. Cognizant or another global firm fits those better.
Infosys reported $20.2B in fiscal 2026 revenue, 56.1% of it from North America, and 328,594 employees. It sells the Infosys Topaz AI suite and works with Anthropic on Claude-based agents. It is Cognizant's closest like-for-like peer. See our Infosys alternatives.
Accenture reported $74.2B in fiscal 2026 revenue and about 814,000 people, with consulting and managed services each about half. It suits buyers who want strategy, change management and technology from one firm. See our Accenture alternatives.
EPAM is an S&P 500 engineering firm with about 62,850 people. Financial services is its largest vertical, and it sells the AI/Run suite and open-source DIAL platform. See Ryz Labs vs EPAM.
Globant is NYSE-listed and sells "AI Pods" as a monthly subscription. It suits buyers who want a productized way to buy AI work. See our Globant alternatives.
If you need one system built and shipped on your hours, talk to us. Our AI consulting page shows how a pod scopes the work, and our guide to alternatives to big consultancies for building AI covers the wider field.
Ryz Labs, for US teams that want a senior AI pod working their hours in their own cloud and repos. You get a scoped plan, a price and named engineers before work starts.
Cognizant reported $21.1B in 2025 revenue and about 351,600 employees in its 10-K. That scale suits large managed-services estates. If you need one system built and shipped, a senior Ryz pod works US business hours on your team.
Not on its site. Its 2025 10-K shows $10.0B of revenue from fixed-price contracts, $9.1B from time-and-materials and $1.9B from transaction- or volume-based contracts. Ryz publishes ranges: $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month for mid-level and senior engineers.
Use a framework when your use case matches its reference agents. Build when the workflow, data or controls are specific to you. Our guide to custom software vs SaaS vs a systems integrator covers the trade-offs.
We checked these facts in October 2026. Pricing and services change often, so confirm the details with each firm before you sign.
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