You tend to need some really awesome work experience to get the former while the latter is fairly easy to walk into.
Unless you mean the arbitrage of doing this from different countries with more favourable tax/COL?
If you’re wondering how to be a consultant, you won’t get FAANG money. If you know how to be a consultant, it’s a matter of finding the right clientele and/or hiring a sales rep for their clientele.
Two solutions I have seen (thanks to the news):
1. Be being a world-class academic on a hot ML topic consulting to a huge tech company at a strategic level
2. Be the prime minister of a G8 country and consult for global investment firms
If you're a software engineer or even engineering leader at a startup/SME you're not going to find these contracts unless you're in the 0.001% of the market for a niche skill that's desperately in need.