Compare / Head to head
Katana vs MRPeasy
The category leader by momentum against the value option that has been doing the same job for a decade. Both are focused MRPs; the decision is what you want next to the MRP.
Checked 3 September 2026
We are not a neutral party, and you should read this knowing that. Rutba makes software that competes with both products on this page, and there is a section about us at the bottom. Everything above it is written from what each vendor publishes about their own product, dated, with no prices reproduced and nothing said about anyone’s roadmap, finances or customers. If we have described either product incorrectly, tell us and we will correct it and say that we did.
The actual decision
What you are really choosing between.
Whether you want the mature, Shopify-first, connector-rich MRP or the cheaper, simpler, no-frills one. On the core MRP itself the difference is smaller than the price gap suggests.
Katana
Katana Cloud Inventory
A cloud manufacturing and inventory platform aimed at small D2C brands and job shops: bill of materials, make orders, live inventory across sales channels, and shop-floor cards for operators. Sold per user in tiered plans, integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, QuickBooks Online, Xero and about eighty other tools by first-party connector.
MRPeasy
MRPeasy Ltd
Cloud MRP for small manufacturers: bills of materials, routings with work centres, MRP runs, purchase orders, work orders and stock control. Sold per user in tiered plans, with QuickBooks and Xero connectors and a public API. A single product rather than a platform.
Head to head
Where they actually differ.
Only the rows that differ. A comparison table padded with things both products do equally well is a table designed to be long rather than useful.
| Katana | MRPeasy | |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | About eighty first-party connectors, a large template library, and native Shopify sync as a differentiator. | A handful of well-maintained connectors, a public API, and the assumption you will keep it simple. |
| Price at typical scale | Materially more expensive at the same seat count. | One of the cheapest full MRPs in the category. |
| Reviews and community | Large public corpus, active community, template marketplace. | Smaller footprint, longer tenure, quieter user base. |
| The bill vocabulary | Iterated on small-batch and craft manufacturing vocabulary for years; contract manufacturing and variants are first-class. | Covers the same shape without the same UX polish; corner cases are documented rather than templated. |
| The default browser experience | Modern, opinionated, and updated frequently. | Utilitarian and stable. Some users read that as trust. |
Which to pick
Real reasons on both sides.
A matchup where one option never wins is not a comparison, and every reader can tell.
Choose Katana if…
- Your store is Shopify or WooCommerce and stays that way
- You need first-party connectors to the tools you already run
- The team wants a product with a template library and an active community
- You are willing to pay for the polish and the ecosystem
Choose MRPeasy if…
- Price is decisive and the requirement is signed off
- The team prefers a simple, stable product over a growing one
- Integrations are a couple of well-known systems and no more
- You are the kind of buyer who reads a decade of consistent product as a virtue
And now the part where we talk about ourselves
Where Rutba fits, on the same axes.
Constrained to what the comparison above actually examined. If neither product was measured on something, we do not get to win it here.
The seams these two live with, we do not have
Both integrate with QuickBooks or Xero for the ledger and a payroll provider for wages. Rutba Manufacturing posts to Rutba Books and pays piece rates through Rutba People without an export. That closes the seams a small manufacturer usually pays either of these two to bridge and pays somebody else to reconcile.
The floor is a first-class app, not a browser tab
A paired tablet clocks an operator on by PIN and drains its offline queue when the network returns. Both of these have a browser view for the floor; a tablet on a bench with device credentials is the difference between an intranet and an appliance.
If you looked at us
The products this comparison touches.
With their real availability labels, which apply inside a comparison exactly as they do everywhere else.
Rutba Manufacturing
Available nowManufacturing & MRP software
Versioned bills of materials with work centres on every routing step, a regenerative MRP run that nets against real inventory and pegs plan to demand, and a shop-floor terminal that reports work in progress from the bench where it happens.
- Versioned bills of materials with effectivity, where-used and a change record
- Work centres with capacity, calendars, and a labour basis for costing
- A regenerative MRP run — nets on-hand and reserved, respects lead times, plans by lot policy
Includes: Manufacturing · Planning · Shop Floor · Quality · Maintenance
From $32 per user / month
Rutba Inventory
Available nowInventory management & warehouse (WMS) software
Stock levels, multi-location transfers, stocktakes, and valuation — the single source of truth every other part of the business reserves and deducts against.
- Live stock across unlimited locations and bins
- Transfers with in-transit visibility
- Scheduled and rolling stocktakes with variance reporting
Includes: Stock · Warehouse Control
From $22 per user / month
Rutba Books
Available nowAccounting & bookkeeping software
Invoicing, bills, banking and reconciliation on one side; the ledger, tax, budgets and the financial reports on the other — fed automatically by every sale, pay run and stock movement happening elsewhere in the business.
- Two apps on one ledger - the daily bookkeeping surface and the accountant’s workbench, neither hiding anything from the other
- Sales invoices, bills, receipts, supplier payments and credit notes, with per-line tax
- Bank statements read in whatever your bank emits - CAMT.053, MT940, OFX/QFX or CSV - and matched, with reconciliation that must reach zero
Includes: Books · Accounts
From $14 per user / month
Rutba People
Available nowHR, payroll & employee management software
Employee records, the org structure, attendance and leave, a shared time clock, and payroll that runs on all of it — plus a self-service portal so staff answer their own questions instead of asking HR.
- Employee records, employment history, contracts, teams and matrix reporting lines
- Attendance and leave with approval chains
- A shared time clock that gives attendance an actual source
Includes: HR · Employee Self-Service · Payroll · Time Clock · Workforce · Recruit · Talent
From $8 per employee / month
Keep comparing
Both of these against us, and against the rest.
Written to the same standard: sourced to what each vendor publishes, dated, and naming where each one wins.
The pillar
Rutba vs Katana
The MRP-for-makers category leader by momentum: cloud, self-serve, and integrated with Shopify and QuickBooks by design rather than by connector.
The pillar
Rutba vs MRPeasy
A pragmatic, mid-priced MRP that has been doing the same job for a decade - the value option in this group and the one most price-sensitive shortlists reach.
Other head-to-heads featuring Katana or MRPeasy
Head to head
Katana vs Fishbowl
The cloud-native, Shopify-first MRP against the QuickBooks-adjacent one that will run on your own hardware. This decision is really about what your books look like.
Head to head
MRPeasy vs Fishbowl
The cheap cloud MRP against the older on-premise one - a comparison usually decided by whether the accountant is on QuickBooks Desktop.
Weighing these two?
Tell us which way you are leaning and why. We will tell you honestly whether we belong on the shortlist at all — there are comparisons on this site where the answer is no.