Research & Consulting Services Data: Federal Awards, Official Market Statistics and the Industry's Own Directories · Head-to-head
GreenBook Directory vs Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings
Which research & consulting services data: federal awards, official market statistics and the industry's own directories data fits your job: GreenBook Directory, or Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
GreenBook Directory
Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | GreenBook Directory | Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings |
|---|---|---|
id | Numeric identifier for the company or facility listing. | not in this set |
name | Company trading name as shown in the directory. | not in this set |
shortDescription | One-to-two sentence capability summary supplied by the company. | not in this set |
city | Primary office city. | not in this set |
state | State or region of the primary office. | not in this set |
country | Country of the primary office. | not in this set |
metroArea | Metropolitan-area grouping of the office location, useful for rolling locations up to media markets and fieldwork catchments. | not in this set |
companyTypes | Service-type classifications applied to the listing. Observed values include Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research and Full Service. | not in this set |
reviewsCount | Number of client reviews recorded against the listing. | not in this set |
reviewsAverageRating | Average client review rating shown on the profile. | not in this set |
isTopRated | Flag indicating the company carries a Top Rated designation. | not in this set |
ranking | not in this set | Current-year position in the ranking, 1 through 50 on the flagship North America list. |
Coverage, side by side
| GreenBook Directory | Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Listings across 50-plus countries, densest in North America and Europe | North America edition of fifty firms, with separate EMEA and APAC editions plus practice-area lists |
| Temporal | A living roster of currently active suppliers, maintained by the suppliers themselves | Annual editions; the 2026 North America list carries prior-year ranks anchored to 2025 |
| Granularity | One record per listed company or facility, classified against a roughly 397-item specialty taxonomy | One row per ranked firm per edition, score carried to three decimals |
What each contains
They tie on 2 attributes. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| GreenBook Directory | Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | GreenBook (New York AMA Communication Services), listing research suppliers for 60-plus years | Vault (by Firsthand), running the profession's annual self-assessment survey |
| Subject lens | Supply-side census of the insights industry: market research companies and focus group facilities, filterable by specialty, geography and reputation | Standings-side league table for consulting: prestige and best-to-work-for positions scored by practicing consultants |
| Documented fields | 18 fields, definitions verified during research | 9 fields, definitions verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | Listings across 50-plus countries, densest in North America and Europe | North America edition of fifty firms, with separate EMEA and APAC editions plus practice-area lists |
| Temporal coverage | A living roster of currently active suppliers, maintained by the suppliers themselves | Annual editions; the 2026 North America list carries prior-year ranks anchored to 2025 |
| Granularity | One record per listed company or facility, classified against a roughly 397-item specialty taxonomy | One row per ranked firm per edition, score carried to three decimals |
| Secondary industries | None | None |
| Best for | Shortlists, market maps and supply-side counts of who does what research, where | Prestige benchmarks, movement tracking and account tiering across the consulting hierarchy |
Where they're equivalent
On paper, nearly twins. Both compress reputation into columns — client verdicts on one side, practitioner ballots on the other. Both resolve to one row per firm, carry a brand asset and a pointer per record, and drop straight into cards, CRM imports and dashboards without cleanup.
They also agree on what they are not: neither blends the two universes. A focus group facility will never crack the Consulting 50, and the ranked strategists — Bain, BCG, Analysis Group, Roland Berger — have no reason to list as research suppliers. Equivalence here is structural, not topical: identical plumbing, adjacent territories.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both — the question decides, and the question usually announces which side it lands on.
Take GreenBook Directory if the question starts with who does this kind of work, and where: RFP longlists filtered by specialty and geography, market-sizing counts of how crowded a category really is, or monitoring for new entrants and reclassification among competitors.
Take Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings if the question starts with who is winning: prestige bands for account tiering, movement alerts when a private partnership shifts visibly once a year, or employer benchmarking on culture, compensation and work/life balance exactly as surveyed professionals weigh them.
Market researchers usually want GreenBook first and Vault second, for quoting the consulting hierarchy back at consulting clients. Competitive intelligence and product teams flip the order — Vault's watchlist first, GreenBook's supply-side structure second.
Sample both, pick by fit. See GreenBook Directory · See Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings
Or take both in one feed
Yes — as map and scoreboard. GreenBook supplies the universe and its structure: who exists, where they sit, what they claim to do, what clients say. Vault supplies the standings for the consulting end of that world: who outranks whom, by how much, and which direction they moved. A talent-market study, for instance, reads GreenBook for the employers and Vault for the prestige gradient across them.
Three seams decide whether the join holds. First, entity matching stays manual — the universes barely overlap and trading names diverge across the two, so key on cleaned firm names, not slugs. Second, vintages disagree: a continuously moving roster against an annual snapshot means every extract needs a date stamp before any diff. Third, classification systems don't translate — companyTypes plus specialty taxonomy on one side, edition-level practice areas on the other — so build an explicit crosswalk before computing anything across both. Browse the rest of the shelf at the research & consulting services data hub.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly — your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is GreenBook Directory better than Vault — Consulting Firm Rankings?
Better at different jobs. GreenBook wins breadth and evidence per row: 1,000-plus research suppliers across 50-plus countries with metro-level locations, specialty classifications and client reviews. Vault wins decisiveness: fifty firms scored to three decimals on published weights, with rank movement flagged. Both rate 7 of 10; the question picks the winner.
Do the two datasets cover the same firms?
Barely. GreenBook catalogs research and insights suppliers — qualitative fieldwork, quantitative panels, full-service shops and focus group facilities. Vault ranks consulting houses such as Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group and Analysis Group. Expect occasional straddlers, not overlap, so treat them as adjacent universes rather than competing censuses of one population.
How current is each dataset?
Differently, by design. GreenBook behaves as a living roster: listings represent currently active suppliers and profiles are supplier-maintained, so the table moves continuously. Vault moves annually: the 2026 edition is live and every row anchors to its 2025 prior rank. Date-stamp any extract before diffing snapshots across the two.
Can I track how a firm moved up or down over time?
In Vault, natively: every row carries `previousRanking`, `previousYear` and an Up/Down/Neutral `change` flag, so year-over-year movement needs no archived editions. GreenBook has no rank to move; its equivalents are review-count drift, rating changes and reclassification — signals that a firm is changing rather than climbing.
Can I get both GreenBook and Vault datasets from Datadory?
Yes — sample both and pick by fit, or take both in one feed. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary (eighteen fields on the GreenBook side, nine on Vault's) with sample rows attached for inspection before anything ships, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly — your call.