Best Katana Alternatives in 2026: 12 MRP and Inventory Platforms Compared

Updated August 2026: every price below was fetched from the vendor's own pricing page this month, with the billing basis stated in each case, and vendors that publish nothing named as such.

If you make something and you're shopping for a Katana replacement, MRPeasy is the closest like-for-like MRP at a lower entry point, Odoo is the cheapest serious option in the category, Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing is the one to look at for lot and serial genealogy, and Rework (at #6 here) fits the narrower reader whose "MRP problem" is really fragmented orders and customer data rather than production control. But the reason most people are reading this in 2026 has nothing to do with a feature gap. Katana Cloud Inventory, still widely searched under its old name Katana MRP, now starts at $299 a month for Core, not the $99 or $199 every competing listicle still quotes. And the production-planning depth a small manufacturer is actually shopping for sits behind Manufacturing Management, a $199 a month add-on that Katana describes as access to manufacturing routings and manufacturing insights. Do that arithmetic and a Katana configuration with full production planning lands near $498 a month, or near $747 once Traceability ($249 a month) is added.

Every price below came from the vendor's own pricing page this month, and each states its billing basis, because monthly versus annual is where most comparison tables quietly go wrong. Prices are compared like for like too: an MRP-capable configuration against an MRP-capable configuration. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this guide says so rather than guessing. For the wider category view, see Best Inventory Management Software in 2026.

What Katana Does Well, and Why Teams Still Shop

Katana earned its reputation honestly, and that's worth saying before pulling the pricing apart. It's the best-looking MRP in the small-manufacturer segment, the visual production planner genuinely helps a shop owner see what to make next, and the live view across sales channels, raw materials and finished goods reads more clearly than anything else in the mid-market. Unlimited users on every tier, including the free one, is unusually generous where most vendors meter seats hard. Integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, QuickBooks Online, Xero and Amazon are solid. And the free plan is a real product rather than a trial, capped at 30 SKUs (unlimited during a 15-day grace window) with unlimited users, integrations and locations.

What changed is the packaging. Katana repositioned into a modular platform where Core carries make-to-order inventory and the deeper production capabilities are priced as add-ons, and the $99 or $199 figures still repeated across competitor listicles are two tiers out of date. Here's what Katana actually costs today, verified against Katana's pricing page:

Three things follow from that table. Core is the floor, not the ceiling: a shop that wants routings and manufacturing insights adds Manufacturing Management, so $299 plus $199 puts full production planning near $498 a month. A regulated food, supplement or contract manufacturer needing lot genealogy and recall reporting adds Traceability on top and lands near $747 a month before extra locations. And Core is usage-based, billed on the sales orders you deliver, the locations you run and the add-ons you switch on, so even $299 is a floor rather than a fixed price, with annual contracts carrying a 20% usage variance tolerance.

None of that makes Katana a bad product. It does mean the "cheap MRP for small manufacturers" framing that sends most readers to this page no longer describes what they'll be quoted, which is why the comparisons below hold every rival to the same standard: what does an MRP-capable configuration cost, not what does the cheapest inventory tier cost.

Key Facts

• 41% of supply chain professionals say their company is currently using AI, up from 30% a year earlier, and the top use case named is demand and inventory optimization. (2026 MHI Annual Industry Report, MHI and Deloitte, survey of 500 supply chain professionals, via DC Velocity)
• 56% of supply chain leaders are increasing supply chain technology and automation investment, and 52% of them plan to spend over $1 million. (2026 MHI Annual Industry Report, via DC Velocity)
• 80% of manufacturers plan to invest 20% or more of their improvement budgets in smart manufacturing initiatives. (Deloitte, 2026 Manufacturing Industry Outlook, based on a 2025 survey of 600 manufacturing executives)
• 22% of manufacturers plan to use physical AI within two years, more than double the 9% using it today. (Deloitte, 2026 Manufacturing Industry Outlook)
• 78% of manufacturers report trade uncertainty as their top concern and expect input costs to rise by an average of 5.4% over the next year, which turns accurate BOM costing into a live budget question. (Deloitte, 2026 Manufacturing Industry Outlook, citing National Association of Manufacturers survey data)

Quick Comparison Table

1. MRPeasy: The Closest Like-for-Like MRP Swap

MRPeasy targets the same buyer as Katana: a small manufacturer past spreadsheets but short of a NetSuite project. Where Katana leans on visual polish, MRPeasy leans on coverage. Production planning, multi-level BOMs, routings and operations, a shop-floor reporting kiosk, purchasing, stock and CRM all ship in one product rather than behind add-on toggles, which is the difference that matters once Katana's routings sit behind a separate line item.

MRPeasy's pricing page lists Starter at $49/user/month, Professional at $69, Enterprise at $99 and Unlimited at $149, all billed monthly, with annual billing giving one month free and a two-user minimum on Unlimited. Users 1 to 10 pay the standard rate; from the eleventh user, seats come in bundles of ten at $79 per bundle. Feature gating is real: serial numbers, quality control and subcontracting start at Professional, while barcode scanning, approvals and multiple production sites start at Enterprise. There's no free plan, only a 15 plus 15 day trial.

Pricing: $49/user/mo (Starter) up to $149/user/mo (Unlimited), billed monthly; annual gives one month free. No free plan. Sizing and stage fit: 5 to 100 people, best once a shop runs repeatable production orders rather than one-off builds. Best for: Manufacturers who want Katana's Manufacturing Management depth plus shop-floor reporting, at a per-seat price a small team controls. Not ideal for: Teams with many light-touch users, where per-seat pricing outruns Katana's unlimited-user model.

2. Cin7 Core: Multichannel Depth With Assembly-Grade Manufacturing

Cin7 Core (formerly DEAR Systems) suits a maker selling across many channels. Its strength is commercial breadth: ecommerce and marketplace connectors, Xero or QuickBooks Online sync, a B2B portal, POS and a warehouse app, with production alongside as assembly and disassembly against multi-level BOMs. Useful if you kit, bundle or assemble to order. It is not a scheduler with work centers and operator terminals, and that gap is worth confirming before you switch.

Cin7's pricing page lists Cin7 Core Standard at $349/month with 5 users, 6,000 sales orders a year and 2 ecommerce integrations; Pro at $599/month with 10 users, 24,000 orders and 4 integrations; and Advanced at $1,199/month with 15 users, 120,000 orders and 6 integrations. The page prints these as "/month" but never states whether that figure is billed monthly or annually, and publishes no annual discount, so treat it as a list rate and confirm the basis on a call. Extra users are available for purchase at an unpublished rate. Cin7 Omni, the enterprise sibling, is contact-us only with 8 users included. If Cin7 is your other finalist, the head-to-head is here: Cin7 vs Katana, and the full field is here: Best Cin7 Alternatives.

Pricing: Cin7 Core from $349/mo (Standard, 5 users). The page prints "/month" without stating monthly versus annual billing. Cin7 Omni: quote on request. Sizing and stage fit: 10 to 150 people, best once you sell through three or more channels and assemble rather than machine. Best for: Multichannel sellers who assemble or kit and value connector breadth over shop-floor control. Not ideal for: Job shops and process manufacturers needing routings, capacity planning or operator terminals.

3. Fishbowl: The Manufacturing Depth Play for QuickBooks Shops

Fishbowl is the answer when Katana's $249/month Traceability add-on is why you're shopping. Long the default QuickBooks-adjacent inventory and manufacturing system in North America, Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing carries the deepest work-order, multi-level BOM and lot and serial genealogy story here short of NetSuite. If you're a food, supplement, medical device or contract manufacturer who has to trace a finished lot back to a raw-material batch during a recall, this is the tier to look at.

One correction, because it's repeated everywhere: Fishbowl's famous perpetual licence around $4,395 is no longer on the vendor's price list. Fishbowl's pricing page publishes subscriptions only. Fishbowl Inventory runs Essentials at $229/month billed annually (2 users), Growth at $429/month billed annually (5 users) and Scale at $729/month billed annually (10 users), and those tiers cover finished goods without manufacturing. Manufacturing lives in Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, from $675/month, priced by users and deployment for teams from 2 to 200-plus, with Fishbowl Advanced Warehouse from $595/month on the same basis. The page states Advanced pricing is always confirmed by quote. Self-managed deployment is offered, but no perpetual price is published. For the wider field, see Best Fishbowl Alternatives.

Pricing: Fishbowl Inventory from $229/mo billed annually (Essentials, 2 users). Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing from $675/mo and Advanced Warehouse from $595/mo, both priced by users and deployment and confirmed by quote. Sizing and stage fit: 10 to 200-plus people, best for established manufacturers with compliance obligations rather than first-time MRP buyers. Best for: QuickBooks-centric manufacturers needing real work orders plus traceability, who'd rather buy depth than stack Katana add-ons. Not ideal for: Small teams wanting a published all-in price they can sign up for online today.

4. inFlow Manufacturing: Flat-Rate Pricing for Small Makers

inFlow is the flat-rate answer. Where MRPeasy meters seats and Katana meters usage, inFlow Manufacturing charges one price per plan with a set number of team members included, so you can add a warehouse person without a pricing conversation. The manufacturing edition adds manufacture orders, bills of materials and operations on top of everything in inFlow Inventory, fitting a shop that builds from components or sells kits and bundles.

The catch is order volume. inFlow's Manufacturing pricing page lists StartUp at $224/month billed monthly or $2,148/year billed annually (about $179/month), with 2 team members, 1,200 sales orders a year and 1 integration. Growth is $561/month billed monthly or $5,388/year billed annually (about $449/month), with 5 members, 12,000 orders and 3 integrations. Scale is $1,124/month billed monthly or $10,788/year billed annually (about $899/month), with 10 members and unlimited orders. Expansion is $2,874/month or $27,588/year with 25 members. Exceed your allowance and you pay $0.20 per extra order. Onboarding is a required $499 one-time fee on the Manufacturing plans, which is unusual enough to change year-one cost, and it's optional rather than required on inFlow Inventory. Watch the naming too: inFlow Inventory is a different product without manufacture orders, at $129/month billed annually or $161/month month to month.

Pricing: inFlow Manufacturing from $224/mo billed monthly, or $2,148/yr billed annually (about $179/mo), on StartUp. Overage $0.20 per extra sales order. Required $499 one-time onboarding on Manufacturing plans, optional on inFlow Inventory. Professional services and training run $199/hour. Sizing and stage fit: 2 to 25 people, best as a first real system after spreadsheets or a light QuickBooks setup. Best for: Small makers wanting predictable flat pricing and a low-friction rollout, whose order volume fits inside a tier. Not ideal for: High-order-volume sellers, where the metered sales-order allowance becomes an upgrade conversation quickly.

5. Odoo: The Cheapest Serious MRP Path, With One Honest Catch

Odoo is the value answer, and the free claim is real rather than marketing. Odoo's Inventory page says "Free, forever, with unlimited users" and "Your first app is always free with Odoo, including free hosting and support. You'll only have to pay if you install more applications." Odoo Manufacturing is a proper MRP: multi-level BOMs, work orders, work centers, a shop-floor app for operators, a master production schedule, lot and serial tracking, and quality checks.

Here's the catch, and it lands squarely on this article's reader. Manufacturing is a second app, so installing it alongside Inventory is exactly what ends the free tier. Odoo's pricing page publishes three numbers per plan: Standard at $7.25/user/month billed yearly, against a regular yearly rate of $7.79/user/month, with monthly billing higher (Odoo shows $11.20 as the undiscounted monthly rate); and Custom at $10.90/user/month billed yearly, undiscounted at $17.00 monthly. The page notes the discount is valid for 12 months for initial users ordered, so the promotional rates step up after year one. Custom adds Odoo.sh or on-premise hosting, Studio, multi-company and the external API. Even at the regular $7.79 yearly rate, ten users on Standard costs well under half of Katana Core plus Manufacturing Management. For the wider field, see Best Odoo Alternatives.

Pricing: One App Free ($0, unlimited users, one app). Adding Manufacturing moves you to Standard at $7.25/user/mo billed yearly, promotional, against a regular yearly rate of $7.79/user/mo. Odoo renders its rates dynamically and varies them by region, so confirm the figure for your own country. Sizing and stage fit: 5 to 500 people, and the only option here that scales from a two-person workshop to a multi-plant operation on one data model. Best for: Cost-sensitive manufacturers with some technical capacity, in-house or via a partner, who want full MRP depth for a fraction of Katana's stacked cost. Not ideal for: Teams with no implementation appetite who need to be running by Friday, which is exactly where Katana still wins.

6. Rework: One Platform for Orders, Stock and the Customer Record

Rework belongs on this list for a specific reader, so the limit goes first. Rework is not an MRP. It does not ship multi-level BOMs, production scheduling, shop-floor control, work orders or full lot and serial genealogy. If you machine parts, run routings across work centers, or have to trace a finished lot back to a raw-material batch for a recall, look at MRPeasy, Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, Odoo Manufacturing or NetSuite instead. Rework is also not a 3PL or WMS platform: no bin-level slotting, wave picking or carrier rate shopping.

What Rework does is consolidation. Its Inventory module sits on the same platform as Sales CRM, Lead, Commerce, Invoice, Product, Work Ops and People, so the stock count, the sales order, the invoice and the customer record live on one platform rather than four tools joined by integrations. It also runs a unified multi-channel inbox across WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DM, web chat, email and SMS on the contact timeline. That earns it a place here only for the reader whose "MRP problem" is really an order, stock and customer-data fragmentation problem. If the CRM side weighs as heavily as the stock side, Best CRM Software in 2026 is worth reading alongside this.

Rework does not publish a price for Inventory, which isn't named in any of its three priced product lines, so this guide won't map it onto one. Rework sells packages rather than per-user licences, and Inventory is quoted per organization. See rework.com/pricing.

Pricing: Quote on request. Rework does not publish a price for Inventory; it is quoted per organization. See rework.com/pricing. Sizing and stage fit: Roughly 10 to 200 people, not solo or single-user buyers. Best where tool sprawl, not production control, is the bottleneck. Best for: Mid-size operators, especially social-commerce and B2B sellers, who need stock and orders on the same record as the CRM pipeline and are consolidating a stack, not buying an MRP. Not ideal for: Anyone who genuinely needs manufacturing resource planning. Contract manufacturers, job shops, and regulated food, supplement or device producers needing genealogy and recall reporting should shortlist MRPeasy, Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, Odoo Manufacturing or NetSuite instead.

7. Unleashed: Batch and Serial Tracking as Standard, Orders Metered Hard

Unleashed (owned by The Access Group, still sold and priced as Unleashed) is the wholesale-led option, built around a distributor's workflow first: strong purchasing, landed costs, multi-warehouse stock, and batch and serial tracking included rather than sold as a traceability add-on. For a food or beverage maker needing batch numbers on every movement without Katana's $249/month Traceability line, that's a real monthly difference.

Manufacturing itself is a module. Unleashed's pricing page lists Core at $399/month billed monthly or $4,389/year billed annually (about $366/month) with 3 users, and Pro at $729/month billed monthly or $8,019/year billed annually (about $668/month) with 5 users. Production and Manufacturing is a $69/month module, Warehouse Management and Multi-Bin is $149/month, and Advanced Inventory Manager is $149/month. Extra users are $69/month on Core and $89/month on Pro. Here's the number that decides most Unleashed evaluations: both tiers include only 100 sales orders a month. Order upgrades run $70/month for 500, $200/month for 1,500, $320/month for 3,000 and $490/month for unlimited, so a busy seller's real bill is the plan plus an order pack, not the headline.

Pricing: Core $399/mo billed monthly or $4,389/yr billed annually; Pro $729/mo or $8,019/yr. Production and Manufacturing module $69/mo. Both tiers include 100 sales orders/mo; order upgrades $70 to $490/mo. Sizing and stage fit: 5 to 100 people, best for wholesale-first businesses that manufacture or assemble as a secondary activity. Best for: Distributors and wholesale-led makers needing batch and serial tracking as standard, who will size an order pack honestly up front. Not ideal for: High-volume ecommerce sellers, where 100 included orders a month makes the entry price misleading.

8. Oracle NetSuite: The System You Buy When the MRP Stops Being the Problem

NetSuite is the enterprise endpoint, and a different kind of purchase. Instead of an MRP that integrates with your accounting system, manufacturing, financials, inventory, order management and CRM share one database. Advanced Inventory Management, WMS and Advanced Manufacturing are optional modules on the core platform, and the depth is real: multi-level BOMs, routings, work orders, work centers, capacity planning, lot and serial traceability, and quality management.

Oracle publishes no price for NetSuite. The licence is a core platform fee plus optional modules plus user count, billed annually, with a one-time implementation fee on top. Any per-user figure you've seen on a comparison blog is third-party estimation, and this guide won't repeat one as if Oracle confirmed it. Plan around shape rather than amount: an annual contract, an implementation measured in months, and a partner or in-house admin to run it. That's a step change from toggling Katana add-ons. For the wider field, see Best NetSuite Alternatives, and if a mid-market ERP is the real shortlist, Best SAP Business One Alternatives covers the neighbours.

Pricing: No published price. Quoted per customer as an annual licence covering core platform, optional modules and user count, plus a one-time implementation fee. Sizing and stage fit: 50 to 1,000-plus people, appropriate once multi-entity finance and manufacturing need to share one system. Best for: Manufacturers who've outgrown a standalone MRP and want production, finance and reporting in one system, not three integrated ones. Not ideal for: Anyone comparing $299 and $498 a month. The order of magnitude is different, and so is the project.

9. Zoho Inventory: The Budget Option, With a Manufacturing Caveat You Must Read

Zoho Inventory is the cheapest credible option here, and the caveat matters more in a manufacturing article than a general one: it is not an MRP. No multi-level BOMs, no work orders, no production scheduling, no shop floor. What it does have is composite items for simple bundles, plus good multi-location order management, batch and serial tracking, barcode scanning, and tight integration with Zoho Books and Zoho CRM.

Zoho's pricing page is unusually clear. The Free plan covers 50 orders a month, 1 user and 1 location. Standard is $29/month billed annually (500 orders, 3 users, 2 locations), Premium is $79/month billed annually (3,000 orders, 5 users, 4 locations), Plus is $129/month billed annually (7,500 orders, 10 users, 6 locations) and Enterprise is $249/month billed annually (15,000 orders, 10 users, 10 locations). Every figure there is the billed-annually rate; monthly billing is offered at a higher rate. Add-ons are cheap and published: extra users $7.50/month, an extra 500 orders $7.50/month, an extra location $10/month, and advanced warehousing $124.17/month. For the wider field, see Best Zoho Inventory Alternatives.

Pricing: Free ($0, 50 orders/mo, 1 user). Standard $29/mo up to Enterprise $249/mo, all billed annually. Extra user $7.50/mo, extra location $10/mo. Sizing and stage fit: 1 to 50 people, best before production complexity arrives rather than after. Best for: Small sellers needing order and stock control across a few locations on a tight budget, who assemble simple bundles rather than manufacture. Not ideal for: Anyone leaving Katana because they need manufacturing. This is a step sideways into order management, not a like-for-like MRP swap.

10. Stocksmith: Built for Handmade and Small-Batch Production

Stocksmith, formerly Craftybase (the vendor calls the rebrand "same team, same software, just a new name"), serves a niche the rest of this list handles badly: the handmade, craft and small-batch producer. Soap and candle makers, cosmetics formulators, jewellers and small food producers share a problem generic inventory tools fumble, which is tracking cost of goods sold down to the raw material inside a recipe, then proving traceability on the way out.

That's what Stocksmith is built around: bills of materials and recipe management, automated production assemblies, batch and lot tracking, compliance reporting, automatic COGS calculation, and production scheduling on the Business and Growth tiers. Stocksmith's pricing page lists Studio at $41/month billed annually or $49/month billed monthly; Indie at $83/month billed annually ($990/year) or $99/month billed monthly, with unlimited users and 1,000 order lines a month; Business at $166/month billed annually ($1,990/year) or $199/month billed monthly, up to 5,000 order lines; and Growth at $291/month billed annually ($3,490/year) or $349/month billed monthly for 5,000-plus order lines. Against a Katana configuration near $498/month, a maker on the Indie tier pays roughly a sixth of that.

Pricing: Studio $41/mo billed annually or $49/mo billed monthly, up to Growth at $291/mo billed annually ($3,490/yr) or $349/mo billed monthly. Sizing and stage fit: 1 to 20 people, ideal from the moment handmade production outgrows a spreadsheet of recipes. Best for: Handmade and small-batch producers needing raw-material-level COGS and compliance records, for whom Katana's pricing is out of proportion to the business. Not ideal for: Anyone running discrete manufacturing at scale, or needing capacity planning across work centers.

11. Megaventory: Work Orders and Multi-Location at a Low Flat Price

Megaventory is the quiet option for small distributors who occasionally manufacture: multi-location stock, purchasing, sales, and work orders against bills of materials, with batch and serial support and barcode handling, at a flat price with a generous transaction ceiling. It won't schedule a production line, but it will tell you what you built, what it consumed and what it cost, which covers a lot of light-manufacturing reality.

Megaventory's pricing page publishes a single Pro plan at $135/month billed monthly, or $121.50/month billed annually with a 10% discount, including 5 users (around $27 per user per month), 50,000 transactions across consignments, invoices and bills, 20 locations, 20,000 products, 20,000 clients, API access and 2 hours of training. Extra users are $45/month up to 35 total, and extra transaction capacity is $45/month per 25,000 up to 200,000. There's a 15-day free trial, and Enterprise is quoted for anything beyond the Pro ceilings. Against a Katana MRP configuration near $498/month, Megaventory's headline is roughly a quarter of that, with the caveat that you're getting work orders rather than an MRP.

Pricing: Pro $135/mo billed monthly or $121.50/mo billed annually (10% off), 5 users included. Extra user $45/mo up to 35. 15-day free trial. Enterprise quoted. Sizing and stage fit: 3 to 35 people, best for small distributors and light assemblers rather than production shops. Best for: Small multi-location operations needing work orders and stock control without paying MRP prices for a scheduler they'd never open. Not ideal for: Manufacturers whose bottleneck is capacity planning or shop-floor visibility.

12. Descartes Finale (formerly Finale Inventory): The Barcode and Warehouse Answer

Descartes Finale, still widely known by its former name Finale Inventory and now owned by The Descartes Systems Group, takes the opposite approach to everything else here. Instead of leading with production, it leads with the warehouse: mobile barcode scanning, receiving, picking, cycle counts and multichannel order sync, with builds and assemblies as a supporting capability. If your Katana pain is really that your warehouse runs on printed pick lists and mis-picks eat your margin, this is the more relevant fix than another MRP.

Descartes Finale's pricing page publishes Essentials starting at $499/month, described as best for 1 to 2 warehouses with early operational complexity, and Growth starting at $799/month, which the vendor calls the most common starting point and which includes the Mobile Barcode WMS module plus email, phone and Zoom support. Enterprise is custom, adding API and EDI access, premium support with SLAs and a dedicated account manager. Two honest caveats: the page says "starting at" without stating monthly versus annual billing, and it publishes no per-tier user or order limits. It does quote platform maximums of 300 users, 1.5 million orders a month and 1.5 million products, but a system ceiling is not a plan inclusion, so get your tier's actual limits in writing.

Pricing: Essentials from $499/mo, Growth from $799/mo (includes the Mobile Barcode WMS module), Enterprise custom. The vendor says "starting at" without specifying monthly or annual billing, and publishes no per-tier user or order limits. Standard onboarding is included with the subscription, and most customers take 12, 24 or 36-month terms. Sizing and stage fit: 10 to 300 people, appropriate once warehouse accuracy rather than production planning is the constraint. Best for: Barcode-heavy operations with multiple warehouses and light assembly, where picking accuracy matters more than routings. Not ideal for: Manufacturers who need an MRP. Descartes Finale is a warehouse and order system with build capability, not a production planning platform.

Manufacturing Capability Matrix

This is the table that decides most switches, because it separates the tools that genuinely replace an MRP from the ones that replace the inventory half and quietly drop production. Katana appears as the baseline, configured as Core plus Manufacturing Management, since that's what a manufacturer shopping on production depth would compare against.

Legend: Yes means shipped as a core capability of the configuration named. Partial means the capability exists but is shallower than a dedicated MRP would provide. Add-on means available and billed separately. No means not offered. Not published or Not listed means the vendor does not document it, so this guide won't assert it either way.

Read the Rework row honestly. Five "No" entries in a manufacturing matrix is not a soft limitation to work around; it's the reason Rework only belongs on a manufacturer's shortlist when the actual problem turns out to be fragmented orders and customer data rather than production control.

Onboarding and Implementation Cost

Almost no competing page compares this, and it moves year-one budget more than a tier upgrade does. Three vendors here charge for onboarding on three different models, and one includes it.

Sizing and Persona Fit

Price is only half the fit question. The other half is team size and operational stage, and that's where a lot of Katana switches go wrong: a two-person workshop buys NetSuite-shaped complexity, or a 60-person manufacturer buys a tool built for a craft fair booth.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Start with the manufacturing requirement that cannot be recovered through an integration, then compare billing basis, implementation load, and stage fit. This framework separates true MRP replacements from inventory and connected-operations platforms before price creates a false tie.

What to Do Next

Work out your real configuration before comparing anything. Write down whether you need multi-level BOMs, scheduling, shop-floor reporting, lot genealogy and barcode, then price every finalist at that configuration rather than at its cheapest tier. That single step stops a $299 headline from being compared against a $675 one.

Then run a two-week trial on your top two with your own data: 20 real SKUs, three real BOMs including at least one sub-assembly, and a week of actual orders. Build something, consume the components, and check whether the stock, cost and traceability records come out the way your accountant and auditor need them. A hidden gap is far cheaper to find in a trial than in month three of a rollout. And if your shortlist keeps circling back to fragmented orders and customer data rather than production control, start a conversation with Rework alongside the MRPs.