Cin7 vs Katana: Which Fits Your Inventory and Manufacturing Setup?

Updated August 2026

Most Cin7 vs Katana pages put two headline prices in one column and call the job done. That breaks the comparison before the first table, because these two products do not charge for the same thing.

Cin7 Core is priced by tier, and every tier carries a hard annual sales order allowance. Standard, Pro and Advanced each publish one fixed figure, one fixed user count, one fixed integration count, and a ceiling on how many sales orders you are allowed to process in a year. Katana is priced by usage, and it is modular. Its Core plan starts at a floor, then bills on the sales orders you actually deliver, the locations you actually run, and the modules you actually switch on. One vendor sells you a box with walls. The other sells you a meter.

There is a second thing almost every competing page on this query gets wrong, and it matters more than the billing basis. Katana sells its production depth modularly, on top of the $299 floor. Katana Core does make things: it carries BOMs, subassemblies, manufacturing orders and make-to-order workflows. But manufacturing routings and manufacturing insights, meaning operation sequencing plus cost and usage analysis across those operations, sit in a Manufacturing Management add-on at $199 per month. Traceability is another $249 per month, and Warehouse Management another $149. So a Katana running routed production lands near $498 per month, not $299, and nowhere near the $99 or $199 that a great many still-live blog posts still quote. Katana's reputation as the cheap little MRP for small manufacturers is two pricing generations out of date, and correcting it is the most useful thing this page does.

One piece of housekeeping, because the query itself is ambiguous. Cin7 sells two products: Cin7 Core (formerly DEAR Systems) and Cin7 Omni, a separate, quote-only, multi-channel retail platform. This page compares Cin7 Core against Katana, because Core is the product that competes with Katana on price and on audience. Cin7 Omni versus Katana is a different comparison, and collapsing the two is the most common error in this matchup, so every price cell below names the exact product it belongs to.

This is written for the operations lead, founder or production manager who has already shortlisted these two and needs one honest answer: given what you actually make, sell and ship, which one costs less and does the job? Every figure states its billing basis, and anything modeled rather than quoted is labeled as modeled.

TL;DR

The short verdict. Katana wins on floor price and on seat economics, and it is the more natural fit when manufacturing is your primary job and your team is bigger than your order book. Cin7 Core wins on predictability and on how much sits inside the base price, and it pulls ahead the moment you need traceability, more than a couple of integrations, or a number you can defend in a budget meeting. The crossover is not where the marketing suggests. It arrives as soon as a Katana buyer switches on a second add-on.

Key Facts

• Cin7 Core publishes three fixed tiers, each with a hard annual sales order allowance: Standard $349/month (5 users, 6,000 orders per year, 2 integrations), Pro $599/month (10 users, 24,000 orders, 4 integrations), Advanced $1,199/month (15 users, 120,000 orders, 6 integrations). The page's only footnote is that "Prices are in USD and exclude taxes". It never states whether the monthly figure is billed monthly or annually, and publishes no annual discount and no extra-user rate. cin7.com/pricing
• Cin7 Omni is quote-only. Its pricing cell reads "Contact us for pricing", with 8 users, 5 integrations and flexible order volume. There is no published Cin7 Omni number to compare against Katana, which is why this page compares Cin7 Core. cin7.com/pricing
• Katana's production depth is modular. Katana Core starts at $299/month with unlimited users and unlimited SKUs, and its own pricing page then lists Manufacturing Management at $199/month, described as "Access manufacturing routings, and manufacturing insights", plus Traceability at $249/month, Warehouse Management at $149/month, and a Shop Floor app with no published price. katanamrp.com/pricing
• Katana bills sales orders by usage, not by allowance: "Billed based on the number of sales orders delivered, with a lower per-unit cost as you deliver more". On annual plans, "if your usage exceeds your estimate by more than 20%, we'll work with you to renegotiate your plan." The per-order rate and volume bands are not published. katanamrp.com/pricing
• Cin7 Core is the former DEAR Systems. Cin7 acquired DEAR Systems and Orderhive on February 17, 2021, combining businesses then serving "over 6,000 product sellers globally". PR Newswire The rename took effect January 9, 2023: "The Cin7 product will now be Cin7 Omni; DEAR will be Cin7 Core." cin7.com newsroom
• Katana raised a 14 million euro Series B extension on October 2, 2025, led by Cogito Capital Partners, taking total funding past 60 million euros. It states it serves "over 1,500 SMBs across 70 countries" and processes over $3 billion in gross merchandise value annually. katanamrp.com newsroom
• Most of the market both products sell into is tiny. Of 239,265 US manufacturing firms in 2022, "around three-quarters of these firms have fewer than 20 employees" and 93.1% have fewer than 100, per the National Association of Manufacturers citing US Census Bureau Statistics of US Businesses. nam.org That distribution is why Katana's unlimited-user model and Cin7 Core's five-seat floor pull buyers in opposite directions.

Two Different Origins, Two Different Jobs

These products feel similar on a feature grid and behave nothing alike in a real business, and the reason is where each one started.

Cin7 Core began life as DEAR Systems, an inventory and order platform aimed at product sellers rather than factories. It grew outward from the order and the stock record: purchase orders, sales orders, multi-warehouse stock, landed cost, and above all a deep, well-worn accounting integration with Xero and QuickBooks Online. Manufacturing arrived later, bolted onto a strong order platform as Standard Assembly Manufacturing and Bill of Materials, with advanced manufacturing offered as an add-on. Cin7 states Core "integrates with over 700 of the most popular platforms", and that catalog is the real moat. It also explains why so many Cin7 Core buyers are wholesalers, distributors and multi-channel retailers who happen to assemble a few kits, rather than manufacturers proper.

Katana went the other way. It was built manufacturing-first for small producers, and it shows in the vocabulary: manufacturing orders, make-to-stock and make-to-order workflows, subassemblies, a shop floor app, and production planning that recalculates as material availability changes. Inventory in Katana is downstream of production, not the other way round. The company is also younger and smaller, with just over 1,500 SMB customers across 70 countries.

There is one more piece of Cin7 history worth knowing, because a meaningful share of the people reading this page arrived as refugees from it. Cin7 Orderhive is dead. Cin7 acquired Orderhive alongside DEAR in February 2021, rebranded it as Cin7 Orderhive, announced its discontinuation on April 18, 2023, and took it out of service on March 31, 2024. If you were an Orderhive customer, you were migrated onto Cin7 Core or you left, and if you are shopping right now partly because of that forced migration, that is a completely rational reason to be re-evaluating rather than renewing. Do not go looking for an Orderhive price. There is not one, and there will not be one.

What Cin7 Core Actually Sells You: Tiers With Walls

Cin7 Core's pricing page is refreshingly plain. Three tiers, three prices, three sets of limits. What makes it unusual in this category is that the limiting resource is not seats, it is sales orders per year.

Two gaps are worth naming rather than papering over.

The page prints "/month" and never says whether that is billed monthly or annually. Most competitors in this category publish both, or at minimum flag which one the headline is. Cin7 does neither and publishes no annual discount, so when you compare $349 against a rival's annual-billed figure you may not be comparing the same thing. Get the answer in writing before you sign.

No extra-user rate is published either. All three tiers say more users are "available for purchase", which makes the difference between a 10-person team and a 12-person team a number only sales can give you. In a category where team size is the most volatile variable, that is a real hole in an otherwise transparent rate card.

What the tier structure does give you is a ceiling you can plan against. At 400 sales orders a month, Cin7 Core Standard's 6,000-per-year allowance covers you with room to spare, and your invoice is the same in January as it is in a Black Friday November. That predictability is the entire pitch.

Those annual figures are modeled, not quoted, precisely because Cin7 does not state the billing cycle. Read them as "what twelve monthly payments would total", not as a published annual price.

What Katana Actually Sells You: A Floor, Then a Meter

Katana's page is equally plain but structured on a completely different logic. You are not buying a box with walls. You are buying a base platform, then paying for what you consume and what you switch on.

The unlimited-users line is not marketing filler. In a category where Cin7 Core gives you five seats at $349 and will not tell you what the sixth costs, "unlimited users on every tier including the free one" is a genuine structural advantage, and for a 20-person shop where warehouse staff, production staff and the bookkeeper all need to log in, it can be worth more than the headline price gap.

Then there is the add-on stack, which is where the real money is.

Now stack them, because this is the arithmetic that no competing page on this query performs.

Every figure in that table is modeled at the $299 floor, before any sales order usage above whatever the floor covers, and before extra locations. Katana does not publish the per-order rate, the volume bands or the per-location charge, so a real Katana quote at any meaningful order volume will land above these numbers, not below them.

The takeaway is blunt: $299 is not Katana's price for a manufacturer running routed production. About $498 is, and roughly $747 is the floor for anyone who also needs batch or serial tracking, which is most food, beverage, cosmetics, supplement and medical device producers by regulation rather than by preference. If you have read anywhere that Katana is the $99 or $199 MRP, that page has not been updated in years.

What Three Real Operations Actually Pay

Comparing Cin7 Core Standard against Katana Core is not a like-for-like comparison, because one of them includes assembly manufacturing and the other does not. Every scenario below configures both products to do the same job, then prices them. Cin7 Core figures are the published tier price multiplied by twelve, and are modeled because Cin7 does not state its billing cycle. Katana figures are the published floor plus published add-ons, and are modeled because Katana does not publish its per-order or per-location rates. Neither column is a quote.

Scenario A: The inventory-only seller

A six-person homewares wholesaler running Shopify and Amazon, roughly 350 sales orders a month (4,200 a year), one warehouse, syncing to Xero. No production, no BOMs, no work orders.

Katana wins this one on floor price and wins it comfortably on seats, because six people cost the same as two. The catch is that Katana's $3,588 is a floor and Cin7 Core's $4,188 is a ceiling: at 4,200 delivered orders a year you will pay order usage on top of Katana's base, and nobody outside Katana's sales team knows how much. Cin7 Core Standard's problem is the mirror image, a known total that does not quite fit a six-person team. If you can live inside five seats, the two are close enough that features decide it. If you cannot, jumping to Cin7 Core Pro at $599 to buy seats you need and orders you do not is the worst option on this table.

Scenario B: The small manufacturer, where the received wisdom breaks

An eight-person cosmetics producer, roughly 300 sales orders a month (3,600 a year), one facility, real production with routed operations, and batch and lot tracking with expiry dates because the category requires it.

This is the scenario that inverts what almost every page on this query tells you. Configured to do the same job, Katana costs more than Cin7 Core Pro, by roughly $1,776 a year on modeled floors, and that gap widens once Katana's order usage lands on top. The reason is one line item: Traceability is a $249 per month add-on in Katana, and it is simply part of Cin7 Core.

Drop the traceability requirement and the answer flips back. Katana at $5,976 undercuts Cin7 Core Pro at $7,188 by around $1,212 a year, with unlimited seats thrown in. So the single question that decides Scenario B is not "which is cheaper", it is "do you need batch, lot or serial tracking?" For food, beverage, cosmetics, supplements, nutraceuticals and medical devices, that is usually not a preference, it is a regulator. For a furniture maker or a machine shop, it often genuinely is optional.

Scenario C: The higher-volume operation

A fourteen-person operation shipping roughly 2,500 sales orders a month (30,000 a year), running three stock locations, with production, batch tracking and barcode-driven pick and pack.

At first glance Katana is $3,636 a year cheaper. Look at the last column and the picture changes, because Katana's two unpriced variables are exactly the two things that are large in this scenario. You are metered on 30,000 delivered orders a year and charged per unit for two extra locations, while Cin7 Core Advanced's $1,199 already swallows 120,000 orders and lists unlimited inventory locations from the Standard tier upward.

That location line deserves more attention than it gets. Cin7 Core includes unlimited inventory locations on every tier including Standard, while Katana includes one on Core and charges per additional unit. For a multi-site operator that is a structural difference which never shows up in a headline-price table, and it compounds every time you open a new stockroom, 3PL bay or retail backroom.

The three scenarios side by side

Read across that table and the pattern is clear. Katana's price is a floor that rises with what you do. Cin7 Core's price is a ceiling that does not move until you hit a wall. Which of those you prefer is a finance question as much as an operations one, and it is a fair reason to pick the more expensive product. If your board wants a fixed software line for the year, a published ceiling has value that a lower floor does not.

What neither vendor publishes, and what to ask for

Both rate cards have holes. Take this list into both sales calls and get the answers in writing before you compare quotes.

If you want a repeatable way to run this exercise across a shortlist, our guide to modeling total cost of ownership for SaaS walks through building a floor-versus-ceiling model like the one above.

Manufacturing Capability, Module by Module

Both products can run a factory. The difference is what you have to buy to get there, and how deep each one goes once you do.

Read that table with the price column in mind and the pattern jumps out. Katana has the better manufacturing product and the worse manufacturing packaging. Routings, shop floor control, genealogy and mobile barcode workflows are genuinely stronger and more purpose-built here than anything in Cin7 Core, and a production manager who has used both will usually say so without hesitation. But Katana meters each of them as a separate monthly line, so a buyer who needs three is assembling an $896 per month product out of a $299 per month headline.

Cin7 Core's manufacturing is shallower. Standard Assembly Manufacturing consumes components and produces a finished good, and it does not pretend to be a scheduling engine. What it does instead is put traceability, barcode scanning and unlimited locations inside the base price, which for a lot of small producers is the more valuable bundle even though it is the less impressive feature list.

If neither is deep enough, you are shopping in the tier above both. Our best Cin7 alternatives and best Katana alternatives roundups cover the dedicated MRPs above this pair, and best NetSuite alternatives covers what happens when a growing manufacturer starts getting quoted full ERP.

Accounting and Integrations: The Widest Gap on This Page

If manufacturing depth favors Katana, integration depth favors Cin7 Core, and it is not close.

The two structures cancel out in an interesting way. Cin7 Core has vastly more connectors but rations how many you may use, so a seller running Shopify, Amazon, a 3PL and an accounting package can hit the Standard tier's two-integration wall long before the 6,000-order wall. Katana has far fewer connectors but does not count them, so if the four you need are in its catalog, you will never think about the limit again.

That makes this a binary rather than a scoring exercise. List the systems you actually need connected, then check Katana's catalog first. If everything is there, Katana's unlimited-integration model is the better deal. If even one is missing, or you rely on a niche 3PL, EDI partner or marketplace, Cin7 Core's 700-plus catalog is the reason it costs more.

The accounting layer matters more here than in most software comparisons, because inventory value flows straight into your books, and both products treat Xero and QuickBooks Online as first-class destinations. If the ledger itself is still undecided, our best Xero alternatives and best QuickBooks alternatives roundups cover the options, and best Odoo alternatives is worth a look if you are weighing an all-in-one suite against best-of-breed plus a separate ledger.

Multi-Channel Selling and Order Management

This is the section where Cin7 Core's heritage as an order platform pays off, and where the Cin7 Core versus Cin7 Omni distinction stops being pedantic.

If your business is fundamentally a multi-channel retailer that also assembles a few things, you are a Cin7 buyer, and possibly a Cin7 Omni buyer rather than a Cin7 Core one. Cin7 Omni is the customizable, quote-only platform for exactly that shape, listed with 8 users, 5 integrations and flexible order volume. This page does not price it because Cin7 does not, and any Omni number on a third-party site is somebody's guess. Ask Cin7 to price Cin7 Core and Cin7 Omni side by side so you can see the delta yourself.

If your business is fundamentally a producer that also sells online, Katana is speaking your language, and the channel breadth you give up is probably breadth you were never going to use. Teams still choosing a storefront alongside either product should start with our best ecommerce platforms roundup.

Implementation and Time to Value

Neither vendor publishes an onboarding fee on its pricing page, which does not mean neither charges one. Ask.

Cin7 Core takes longer for the same reason it is more capable: 700 integrations and a deep accounting mapping give you more ways to get it right and more ways to get it wrong. Katana is faster because its free tier lets you model 30 SKUs end to end before you pay anything, which is the cheapest way to de-risk either purchase. Use it. Build three real products with real BOMs, run a real order through, and see whether the product thinks the way your shop does. One note that applies to both: your first month is not a fair test if you migrate stale stock counts into it, so do the physical count first, then load. Our inventory management software roundup covers the wider field if the trial makes you realize you shortlisted the wrong two.

Support, Onboarding and What Users Actually Say

Neither review base points to a support-quality gap big enough to decide a purchase. The more useful signal is what each set of critics complains about, because both complaints are structural rather than fixable: Cin7 Core is hard to set up because it does more, and Katana surprises people on price because its packaging separates things buyers assume are bundled. Knowing both going in removes most of the sting.

When Cin7 Core Is the Right Call

• You need batch, lot or serial traceability. It is included in Cin7 Core and costs $249 a month on top of Katana. For a regulated producer that single line item is usually the whole decision.
• You run more than one stock location. Cin7 Core includes unlimited inventory locations from the Standard tier upward. Katana includes one and charges per unit after that.
• Your order volume is high but your team is small and stable. Cin7 Core Advanced absorbs 120,000 sales orders a year for a fixed $1,199 a month, and that ceiling does not move when December does.
• You connect a lot of systems, or an unusual one. A stated catalog of over 700 platforms is the reason to pay more, particularly for niche 3PLs, marketplaces or EDI partners Katana has never heard of.
• Finance wants a fixed number for the year. A published tier price beats a metered floor in a budget meeting, even when the metered floor is lower.
• You sell wholesale or through retail as well as online. The B2B portal and POS add-ons exist here, and if the multi-channel retail requirement is genuinely heavy, ask Cin7 to price Cin7 Omni against Cin7 Core for you.

When Katana Is the Right Call

• Manufacturing is the main job, not a side effect of selling. Routings, make-to-order and make-to-stock workflows, shop floor reporting and live production planning are meaningfully better here, and it shows within an hour of using both.
• Your headcount is large relative to your order book. Unlimited users on every tier, including the free one, is a structural advantage that no Cin7 Core tier answers, and Cin7 does not publish an extra-user rate.
• You want to test before you pay. Katana Free at $0 with 30 SKUs lets you model real products with real BOMs and run a real order through, which is the cheapest possible way to de-risk either purchase.
• You do not need traceability. A furniture maker, a machine shop or a general assembler that can skip the $249 module lands near $498 a month with routed production included, comfortably under Cin7 Core Pro.
• Your order volume is modest and predictable. Usage billing rewards low volume. It punishes spiky, high-volume operations, which is exactly the shape Cin7 Core's fixed ceiling is built for.
• You want one location, done properly. Katana Core includes one, and if one is all you have, you are not paying for a multi-warehouse feature set you will never open.

If Neither One Fits

Plenty of people land on this page and discover their real requirement sits either side of these two rather than between them.

If you need genuinely deeper manufacturing, with full work-order genealogy and recall reporting, look at the dedicated MRPs and the heavier warehouse platforms in our best Fishbowl alternatives roundup, and if you are being quoted full ERP, our best NetSuite alternatives roundup covers what that money actually buys. If you are moving the other way, and both of these are more system than a small seller needs, our best Zoho Inventory alternatives roundup covers the lighter, cheaper end of the category.

And if the real gap is not inventory depth at all, that is a different problem than either product solves. If your orders, stock counts, invoices and the customer record currently live in three or four disconnected tools stitched together by integrations, neither Cin7 Core nor Katana is addressing that, because both are built to be one very good tool inside that stack rather than to collapse it. Rework's Inventory module sits on the same platform as its Sales CRM, Lead, Commerce, Invoice, Product and Work Ops modules, with a unified multi-channel inbox (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DM, web chat, email and SMS) landing on the same contact timeline, so the stock count, the order, the invoice and the customer conversation are one system rather than four that sync. Be clear about what that is not: 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, so if you came to this page to choose an MRP, choose one of the two above it. Rework does not publish a price for Inventory either; it is quoted per organization at rework.com/pricing, sold as packages rather than per-user licences, and built for mid-size operators of roughly 10 to 200 people, not solo sellers.

Decision Framework

The choice narrows to traceability, operating volume, seat count, locations, and the integration catalog your business actually needs.

The verdict. Neither product is broadly cheaper, and anyone telling you Katana is the budget option is quoting a price that no longer exists. Katana has the better manufacturing engine and the worse packaging, with a $299 headline that becomes $498 the moment you need routings and $747 the moment you need traceability. Cin7 Core has the shallower manufacturing and the more generous base, bundling traceability, barcode scanning and unlimited locations into a tier price that does not move. Decide on two questions in this order: do you need traceability, and is your constraint seats or orders? Those two answers settle this comparison faster than any feature grid will.

What to Do Next

1. Answer the traceability question first. If your category requires batch, lot or serial tracking, that alone moves roughly $3,000 a year between these two products, and it settles the comparison before you look at anything else.
2. Count seats and count orders, then see which one is your constraint. If it is seats, Katana's unlimited-user model wins. If it is orders, Cin7 Core's published ceiling wins. Very few businesses are constrained by both.
3. Build three real products in Katana Free. It costs nothing, it holds 30 SKUs permanently, and modeling your actual BOMs is a faster reality check than any demo. Do the same with Cin7 Core's free trial in the same week so the comparison is fresh.
4. Get both quotes in writing with the gaps filled. From Cin7: the billing cycle, the extra-user rate, the sales order top-up rate, and whether the accounting connection consumes one of your included integrations. From Katana: the per-order rate and volume bands, the per-location charge, and the Shop Floor app price.
5. Model three years, not one. Katana's floor is lower and rises with your growth. Cin7 Core's ceiling is higher and sits still until you hit a wall. Which of those you want depends on where you expect to be in year three, and our guide to modeling total cost of ownership for SaaS is a reasonable template for the exercise.

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