Katana MRP Review (2026)Free to 30 SKUs, Then $299/mo+
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The $299 headline is the floor.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 23 Sep 2026
A Free plan covering 30 SKUs with unlimited users, integrations and locations plus all Katana features, add-ons and API access, then Core starting at $299/month with unlimited SKUs, users and integrations, one inventory location and 24/7 support, and an Advantage tier on custom pricing that adds custom integrations, dashboards and automations with a dedicated Solutions Engineer. The $299 is a floor, not a bill: Katana's own FAQ says Core is usage-based, billed on the number of sales orders delivered at a lower per-unit cost as volume grows, plus a charge for each location beyond the one included, but the pricing page no longer publishes those per-order or per-location rates, so the real figure comes from sales.
The add-ons are priced separately: Manufacturing Management (routings and insights) $199/mo, Traceability via batch or serial numbers $249/mo and Warehouse Management $149/mo; a Shop Floor app is listed as an add-on without a price. Onboarding is a $2,000 option on Core and included on Advantage. Annual billing is not a discount: the FAQ says it includes "a small premium" because Katana absorbs usage swings, and usage more than 20% over your estimate reopens the price. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: Operations & Workflow. Across the 49 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $25 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Katana MRP’s entry price of $299 a month sits above that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the price did
We capture Katana MRP’s own pricing page every month and keep the figures, so this is our record of the page — not a forecast, and not someone else’s summary.
Katana's published ladder has not moved this summer. Our July and August 2026 captures both read 'Free Plan + Core from $299/mo' and both carry the same add-on prices of $199, $249 and $149 a month and the same optional $2,000 item, and the page returned those same figures on 17 August 2026. On 14 September 2026 the page also carried a Core calculator with per-order rates ($0.1440 at 500 orders a month down to $0.0594 at 8,000) and per-location prices ($31 to $49 each); by 23 September 2026 that calculator was gone and the page published only the $299 floor, the three add-on prices and the $2,000 onboarding.
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Core is billed on top per delivered sales order and per extra location, at rates Katana no longer publishes, and production routings and traceability are paid add-ons at $199 and $249 a month, which are exactly the features most manufacturers need. It's genuinely capable manufacturing software; just get a quote on your own order volume and price the add-ons you need, not the base plan.
What Katana MRP does
Cloud manufacturing and inventory platform for product businesses. Live inventory control, production scheduling and order syncing across your sales channels — know exactly what to make and when.
What buyers report about Katana MRP
Recurring themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run Katana MRP ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • For a small manufacturer moving off spreadsheets it makes production and inventory visible in one place — 4.4 on G2 across 102 reviews.
- • Unlimited SKUs on the entry plan, and the Shopify and accounting integrations do what they claim.
- • Price is the most-complained-about thing across every platform. One reviewer totals a 523% cumulative increase since starting, driven by model changes and tier bumps.
- • Features have been reclassified into higher tiers mid-contract. Get in writing which tier your features sit in.
- • Core starts at $299/month for one location, but reviewers adding traceability and routings report landing at $747-$1,095.
- • A real learning curve if you have not run an MRP before, plus occasional slow loading.
When the paid plan is worth it
Katana's free tier is not a trial, which is what makes the split unusual. The vendor documents it as carrying all Katana features and add-ons, unlimited users, unlimited integrations and unlimited locations, capped only on catalogue size at 30 SKUs, with a documented 15-day grace period during which that ceiling lifts. That single cap is the whole decision, and a workshop with a narrow range can run a real operation on it indefinitely.
What upgrading explicitly does not buy is a predictable flat bill. Core's $299 covers one inventory location, and Katana's own FAQ says it is topped up by a charge per delivered sales order and per extra location, rates the pricing page no longer publishes, so the real number only comes from a sales quote. Depth is priced apart as well: Manufacturing Management $199, Traceability $249 and Warehouse Management $149 a month.
Nor does committing for a year buy a discount. Katana's FAQ says annual billing includes a small premium because Katana absorbs the risk of usage swings, and usage more than 20% above your estimate reopens the price.
Our monthly capture read this vendor's pricing page in July 2026 and again in August 2026, and the amounts were the same both times. We keep watching — the registry records what moves.
How to actually use Katana MRP
The fastest route to something real is to leave the demo data in place at first. Katana's setup guide recommends editing the sample products, recipes and sales orders before entering anything of your own, then clearing it later with the Demo data button in the navigation bar. Set base currency and units of measure under Settings before importing, because those choices propagate into every item created afterwards. Bulk loading runs through Settings > Data import > Add new products, where an .xlsx template is downloaded.
Each row represents a variant, and the Product name field groups variants under one product. The import itself takes a few minutes depending on item count. The usual snag is the matching rule. Rows are matched on Variant code / SKU and existing items are skipped rather than updated, so a corrected sheet re-imported over the same SKUs silently changes nothing; a separate Update template is required. Field limits also trip people up: category names cap at 35 characters and units of measure at 7.
Distilled from Vendor pricing page and its FAQ, re-read in a real browser on 23 September 2026 after the embedded Core-plan price calculator (read at all three example configurations on 14 September 2026) had been taken off the page, plus the flexible-pricing page, the onboarding overview and Katana's own support knowledge base articles, read 4 August 2026.
The natural comparison is Cin7 Core or Fishbowl — comparable manufacturing/inventory platforms — weigh by which add-ons you'd actually enable and your order volume.
Frequently asked questions
What does Katana really cost once it is set up?
Core starts at $299 a month, but that covers one location and no sales-order volume: Katana bills Core per delivered sales order, cheaper per order as volume rises, plus a charge for each extra location. The pricing page no longer publishes those rates, so ask sales for a quote on your own order count. The add-ons sit on top: Manufacturing Management $199, Traceability $249 and Warehouse Management $149 a month. Read on 23 September 2026.
Is annual billing cheaper?
No. Katana's own FAQ says annual billing includes a small premium because Katana absorbs the risk of usage fluctuations, and if usage runs more than 20% over your estimate the plan is renegotiated. You are buying a predictable bill, not a discount; if your volume is steady, monthly is the cheaper commitment.
Is the free plan usable or is it a demo?
It is genuinely usable within one hard limit: 30 SKUs. Within that you get unlimited users, unlimited locations, the integrations and the API, which is unusually generous — most free manufacturing tiers cap users first. If your catalogue is under 30 SKUs it is a real plan; the moment it is not, you are on Core.
What are people comparing Katana with?
The measured search on our pages is for alternatives, and the reason is almost always the $299 floor: small manufacturers look at Katana, see the entry price plus the add-ons, and go looking for something cheaper. The fair comparison is total cost including the modules you need rather than the headline, because the cheaper tools often price those same modules in.
What should I weigh before buying Operations & Workflow software?
Usually it sits on top rather than replacing everything. Tools in this class tend to become the layer where work is tracked and handed off, while your existing systems stay the source of truth for their own data. Before you buy, map which tools it would replace outright and which it would merely sync with. If the answer is that it syncs with all of them, you are adding a layer rather than removing one.
Is this a hands-on review of Katana MRP?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on G2, Capterra and Software Advice, read August 2026.
- Re-verified 2026-09-23.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
Others in this category
Reviewed operations & workflow tools that share ground with Katana MRP — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:
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