Quick Verdict
IIT Kharagpur (IIT KGP) is the stronger pick on Faculty and Academics if you weigh scale, sourced national and international rankings. It has a much larger faculty base and course catalog and consistently posts a better NIRF score than IIT Hyderabad (IIT Hyderabad, a newer IIT campus in Hyderabad, Telangana). IIT Hyderabad, founded decades later, has a smaller but more tightly staffed faculty relative to its student body and is the top-ranked institute among the "second-generation" IITs set up after 2008 — a real strength, just not enough to overtake Kharagpur's overall academic scale and ranking edge.
Snapshot
| Metric | IIT Kharagpur | IIT Hyderabad |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1951 | 2008 |
| Faculty count | 928 (source) | 306 (source) |
| Student count | 15,862 (source) | 3,946 (source) |
| Annual budget | ₹1,302.45 crore (US$140 million) (source) | ₹300 crore (US$31 million) (source) |
| Total courses offered | 180 full-time courses (source) | 78 courses (source) |
| NIRF 2025 overall rank / score | 5 / 78.49 (source) | 8 / 63.10 (source) |
| QS World Engineering Rankings 2026 | 215 (one of five IITs in the global top 100) (source) | Not listed among the top-100 IITs in this source |
Note: India (the country both institutes belong to) publishes several parallel ranking systems, and sources don't always agree on the exact year or number — see the Detailed Analysis below for how the pw.live NIRF Engineering figures compare.
Detailed Analysis
Kharagpur (Kharagpur, a city in West Bengal, India) is the oldest Indian Institute of Technology, founded in 1951, and its scale shows up directly in academics: 928 faculty members teaching across 180 full-time courses, backed by an annual budget of roughly ₹1,302.45 crore — more than four times IIT Hyderabad's ₹300 crore (source). That scale gives it breadth: more departments, more specializations, and a larger base of senior faculty built up over seven decades.
IIT Hyderabad (IIT Hyderabad, one of the "second-generation" IITs set up in Hyderabad, Telangana between 2008 and 2009) is far younger and smaller, with 306 faculty and 78 courses (source) (source). Doing the arithmetic on the faculty and student counts above gives a rough faculty-to-student ratio of about 1:17 at Kharagpur versus about 1:13 at Hyderabad, suggesting Hyderabad students may get comparatively more faculty attention per head, even though Kharagpur has far more faculty in absolute terms.
On rankings, the picture is consistent across sources even though the exact numbers vary by year: in the NIRF 2025 overall list, Kharagpur ranks 5th with a score of 78.49 against Hyderabad's 8th place and 63.10 score (source). A separate comparison table pegs the NIRF Engineering ranking at 6 for Kharagpur versus 8 for Hyderabad in 2023 (source). One source states this rank 8 differently — "IIT Hyderabad is ranked 8/200 by NIRF Engineering, and IIT Kharagpur is ranked 4/35 by India Today Engineering" (source) — but that line compares two different ranking agencies (NIRF vs. India Today) for the two institutes rather than the same yardstick, so it isn't a like-for-like comparison and should be read with that caveat. On the QS World Engineering Rankings 2026, Kharagpur (rank 215) is named among five IITs in the global top 100, while Hyderabad does not appear in that list (source).
Hyderabad's genuine academic strength is relative standing within its cohort: it is "consistently ranked highest among second-generation IITs at NIRF rank 8" (source) — meaning among the IITs founded from 2008 onward, it is the academic leader. For a reader comparing only within that newer group, that is a meaningful data point; against Kharagpur specifically, it still trails on the metrics above.
Verdict
On Faculty and Academics, IIT Kharagpur is the winner: it has nearly three times the faculty strength, more than double the course offerings, a consistently better NIRF score, and a global ranking presence that Hyderabad's sourced data doesn't match. IIT Hyderabad is the reasonable runner-up, and a prospective student should lean toward it if what matters most is a newer, more compact academic environment with a potentially higher faculty-to-student ratio and the strongest academic standing among post-2008 IITs — rather than Kharagpur's larger, more established, broader academic ecosystem.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Which IIT has more faculty, Kharagpur or Hyderabad?
A: IIT Kharagpur, with 928 faculty members versus IIT Hyderabad's 306 (source).
Q: Which institute ranks higher in NIRF 2025?
A: IIT Kharagpur, ranked 5th overall with a score of 78.49, versus IIT Hyderabad at 8th with 63.10 (source).
Q: Does IIT Hyderabad offer fewer courses than IIT Kharagpur?
A: Yes — 78 courses at IIT Hyderabad versus 180 full-time courses at IIT Kharagpur (source).
Q: Is IIT Hyderabad the best among the newer IITs academically?
A: According to sourced data, yes — it is consistently ranked highest among second-generation IITs at NIRF rank 8 (source).
Q: Which institute has a bigger academic budget?
A: IIT Kharagpur, with an annual budget of about ₹1,302.45 crore versus IIT Hyderabad's ₹300 crore (source).
Q: Is IIT Kharagpur older than IIT Hyderabad?
A: Yes — IIT Kharagpur was founded in 1951, making it the oldest IIT, while IIT Hyderabad was established in 2008 (source).
Q: Does a lower faculty count mean worse teaching at IIT Hyderabad?
A: Not necessarily — dividing the sourced student and faculty counts gives IIT Hyderabad a faculty-to-student ratio of roughly 1:13, compared to roughly 1:17 at IIT Kharagpur, so class-level attention could be comparable or better despite the smaller absolute faculty size.
Q: Is IIT Kharagpur ranked in global QS Engineering rankings while IIT Hyderabad isn't?
A: Based on the sourced data, IIT Kharagpur (rank 215) appears among the five IITs listed in the QS World Engineering Rankings 2026 top 100, while IIT Hyderabad does not appear in that specific list (source).
Related
For the complete picture beyond Faculty and Academics — placements, academics, campus life, and more — see the full IIT Kharagpur vs IIT Hyderabad comparison.