Katana vs MRPeasy in 2026: Which MRP Actually Fits Your Factory?

This post contains affiliate links — see our Affiliate Disclosure. We earn a commission from both products below, so we have no reason to steer you wrong between them — only to help you pick the one you'll keep.

Tecma installs fillers, cappers, and labelers for small manufacturers, and at some point during almost every site survey the same question comes up: "Katana or MRPeasy?" They're the two names small manufacturers hear first, they solve the same core problem, and they're built on opposite philosophies. After watching customers run lines on both, here's the honest comparison — and a decision rule you can apply in about two minutes.

The two-minute version: Katana is inventory-first, beautiful, flat-priced, and built for D2C product brands selling through Shopify. MRPeasy is production-first, per-user priced, and built for shops that plan real routings, work centers, and labor. Brand that sells what it makes online → Katana. Factory that manufactures to order or in stages → MRPeasy.

Head to head

	Katana Cloud Inventory	MRPeasy
Built for	D2C/e-commerce product brands	Small factories, 10–200 employees
Pricing model (mid-2026)	Flat: free plan, then ~$299–$899+/mo, unlimited users; onboarding fee on some tiers	Per user: $49–$149/user/mo, 2-user minimum; extra users past 10 at $79 per 10
Cheapest real entry	Free plan; paid from ~$299/mo	2 users × $49 = $98/mo
Free trial	14 days (plus free plan)	15+15 days, no credit card
Lot/batch traceability	Yes	Yes, from the Starter tier
Production routings & work centers	Light	Deep — its core strength
Barcode scanning	Supported	Higher tiers
Shopify integration	Native, excellent	Native, solid
QuickBooks / Xero	Yes, both	Yes, both
Ease of learning	Easiest in class	Steeper, more "ERP-like"

Prices verified July 2026 and rounded; both vendors adjust pricing — always confirm on their sites.

Where Katana wins

Katana's whole design assumes your business looks like this: you make products, you sell them on Shopify (or similar), and you need inventory, production, and sales orders living in one clean screen. For that shape of business it is simply nicer to use every day. The visual make-order board, the real-time material commitments, the way a web order instantly reserves finished goods — customers describe it as the first software their production lead didn't fight. Flat pricing with unlimited users also means you can give every packer and picker a login without doing seat math.

The trade-offs: entry cost is high for very small teams now that paid plans start around $299/month, and shops with genuine multi-stage routing, subcontracting, or capacity planning will feel the ceiling. Long-time users have also groused about repeated price increases — a fair criticism. Full details in our Katana review.

Where MRPeasy wins

MRPeasy thinks like a production planner. Routings with operations and work centers, capacity views, labor tracking, subcontracting, quality checks on higher tiers — the machinery of an actual factory, scaled down to something a small manufacturer can run without an IT department. Lot traceability is included from the cheapest tier, which matters if you're in food, beverage, CBD, or nutraceuticals where a recall question must be answerable in an hour, not a weekend.

And the money math is friendly to small teams: two users on Starter is $98/month, less than a third of Katana's paid entry point. The 15+15-day trial (fifteen days of Starter, fifteen of Professional, no card required) is the most generous in the category. The trade-offs: the interface is more utilitarian, the learning curve is steeper, and costs climb as you add seats — a 10-person all-hands rollout on Professional is $690/month, which is Katana territory. Our full MRPeasy review covers the tiers in detail.

The decision rule we give customers

Ask three questions. First: is Shopify (or Amazon/e-commerce generally) your main sales channel? If yes, lean Katana. Second: do you plan production as routed operations across work centers — mixing, filling, capping, labeling as scheduled steps with capacity limits? If yes, lean MRPeasy. Third: how many people need logins? Two or three → MRPeasy is far cheaper. Ten or more → Katana's flat price often wins the math back.

If you're a hot-sauce, cosmetics, coffee, or supplement brand selling direct: start Katana's free plan, load one product's BOM, and run a real order through it this week. If you're a contract packer, a multi-stage processor, or simply cost-sensitive with a small office team: start the MRPeasy 30-day trial and build one routing end to end. The trial that survives contact with your actual Friday afternoon is the right answer.

The part software reviews skip

Whichever you pick, the software is only as good as the line data you feed it. An MRP that thinks your filler runs 40 bottles a minute when it actually runs 28 will schedule fantasy. When Tecma does a site survey we time the real line, and matching software to equipment is part of the job — if you're setting up or upgrading production, contact us at sales@tecmausa.com or (786) 952-7575.

See everything we recommend in one place: Recommended Software for Small Manufacturers.