As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates inFlow Inventory 2.5/5 and Katana 3/5 in Supply Chain & Logistics. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 2 of the 6 judges pick inFlow Inventory and 4 pick Katana. inFlow Inventory scores higher on 3 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency, Warehouse operations: receiving, picking & packing and Multi-carrier shipping & returns). Katana scores higher on 3 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty, Freight & transport management and Integrations, automation & exit). Provenance — inFlow Inventory: Rest of world; Katana: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The benches split rather than settle. inFlow Inventory is ahead on pricing transparency (6.3 vs 4.7, six judges leaning inFlow), warehouse operations (6.2 vs 5.8) and shipping and returns (4.5 vs 4.2). Katana is ahead on sovereignty (5.8 vs 3.5, six judges leaning Katana) and marginally on integration and automation (6.5 vs 6.3) and freight and transport (1.2 vs 1.0). Inventory control sits level at 7.5 apiece, with two judges leaning each way and two ties. Weighted totals favor Katana for four judges and inFlow Inventory for two. Sovereignty attributes as they stand: Katana lists data residency EU only and legal entity jurisdiction Estonia; inFlow Inventory lists data residency US default and legal entity jurisdiction unknown; both list US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure. The captured pages give different statements on where Katana's data lives.
Choose inFlow Inventory if
You need published prices before you commit: pricing transparency leaned to inFlow Inventory with six judges (6.3 vs 4.7), and the four tiers are published at Lite 79, Core 229, Pro 389 and Max 539 EUR/mo billed annually.
Your team runs stock across multiple locations and sublocations with reorder points set per location: warehouse operations leaned to inFlow Inventory (6.2 vs 5.8, two judges leaning its way, four ties).
You print parcel labels through EasyPost or ShipStation on your own carrier accounts and handle returns on the sales order: shipping and returns leaned to inFlow Inventory (4.5 vs 4.2).
You weigh the warehouse manager's and fulfilment provider's views of the panel: those two judges scored inFlow Inventory higher in weighted totals (6.4 vs 5.3 and 5.7 vs 5.4).
Choose Katana if
You need EU data residency: Katana's data residency attribute is EU only, and six judges leaned Katana on sovereignty (5.8 vs 3.5) — noting that the captured pages give different statements on where Katana's data lives.
Your team manufactures: Katana's verdict covers production management and reorder quantities computed from stock, forecast demand, safety stock and MOQ, with inventory control level at 7.5.
You sell on WooCommerce, BigCommerce or eBay: those connectors appear in Katana's integration verdict, and integration and automation leaned Katana (6.5 vs 6.3, two judges leaning its way).
You require a known EU legal entity: Katana's legal entity jurisdiction is Estonia, while inFlow Inventory's is listed as unknown.
You weigh the ecommerce operations lead, transport planner, integration lead and skeptic views of the panel: four judges scored Katana higher in weighted totals.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The IT & Integration Lead
Owns the ERP, the shop and the DATEV export for a mid-sized manufacturer, and gets the call when an order does not arrive in the warehouse. Wants a documented API and webhooks, EDI for the two retail chains, connectors the vendor actually maintains, a processor list for the recipient addresses, and a full export the day the contract ends.
inFlow Inventory
Katana
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Inventory & stock control
inFlow Inventory
Lots, serials and expiry dates are tracked end to end — assigned at goods receipt or manufacture, suggested first-expiring-first-out or first-in-first-out at picking, with expiry alerts, write-offs and a per-lot movement history that exports to CSV — and stock sits per location with bins and aisles, transfers, counts, reorder points per product per location and sync to the storefronts. We found no public information on a stated valuation method (FIFO or average cost) for costing or documented demand forecasting, so I stop short of the top.
Katana
Real-time movements, batches, serials and expiry dates with recall traceability, multibin locations, reorder points recalculated from forecast demand and MOQ, kits resolved through bills of materials, and stock synced automatically to Shopify, Amazon and WooCommerce. We found no public information on stocktaking or an inventory valuation method, which keeps it below the top levels.
Receipts against purchase orders assign lots, pick lists follow an efficient route through the sublocations with configurable picking options, allocations stop two workers picking the same units, and the mobile app with the rugged Android scanner confirms the work. We found no public information on batch, wave or multi-order picking strategies, on packing verification by weight or scan, or on pick, pack and error rates per user and shift.
Katana
The browser-based warehouse app covers receiving against purchase orders, picking and packing tasks with barcode/QR scanning, automatic task assignment, and records which operator received or packed each order. We found no public information on batch or wave picking strategies, putaway suggestions, or pick and error rates per user and shift.
Multi-carrier shipping & returns
inFlow Inventory
Labels come through EasyPost or ShipStation using my own carrier accounts billed directly by the carrier, with rate comparison across FedEx, USPS, UPS and Purolator and a customer confirmation email when the parcel is collected; returns are processed on the order with refund, credit, restock or discard. We found no public information on customs documents, branded tracking pages, pickup points or a self-service returns portal, and no return-label flow appears in the captured returns guide.
Katana
Returns are properly built: statuses from initiated through received to restocked, item-level reasons including batch-tracked products, links to the original sales order, Shopify return sync and automatic QuickBooks credit notes. Outbound parcels are largely someone else's job — the vendor's own help pages say e-commerce shipping is often handled by the platform and carriers are reached through Shippo, ShipStation or 2Ship — and we found no public information on in-product label creation, carrier rules or customs documents.
Freight & transport management
inFlow Inventory
The documented shipping is parcel labels through EasyPost and ShipStation, and the only freight item captured is a cost-recording field on sales orders; the service is presented as small-business inventory management. We found no public information on pallet, groupage or truckload booking, transport documents such as CMR, multi-modal tracking or CO2 emissions reporting.
Katana
We found no public information on pallet, groupage or full-truckload booking, spot quotes or tenders, CMR or eCMR documents, freight cost audit or CO2 reporting. The shipping and integrations pages we read stop at parcel-level shipping through partner platforms.
Integrations, automation & exit
inFlow Inventory
A documented REST/JSON API with keys, filters, pagination and MCP documentation, connectors for Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, QuickBooks Online, Xero and Zapier, and automatic stock sync to storefronts give a working integration layer. But the API sits behind an add-on on select plans, support declines API questions, and we found no public information on webhooks, EDI or DATEV; the end-of-contract backup takes 30 business days and requires all fees paid, and the in-app export excludes manufacture orders, attachments and settings.
Katana
An open API with managed API keys, webhooks for real-time updates, connectors to Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay, QuickBooks and Xero with invoices and bills flowing, Zapier and Make, and an Advantage plan whose engineers build and maintain custom integrations including EDI and 3PL. We found no public information on API rate limits and versioning or on a documented end-of-contract export of orders, stock movements and shipments — the terms cover deletion within three months, not export — and the named accounting platforms are QuickBooks and Xero, with no DATEV connector named on these pages.
European sovereignty
inFlow Inventory
The contracting entity is an Ontario corporation and all service data is hosted on Microsoft Azure in North Central US (Illinois), with the privacy policy stating processors are primarily US-based and cookie data transferred to the United States — no EU hosting option appears in the captured pages. A subprocessor list URL and an annually audited SOC 2 are published, but the list itself was not among the captured pages, so I cannot credit named processors with locations, and no EU contracting entity exists.
Katana
The contracting entity is Katana Technologies OÜ, the privacy policy states the service is hosted in the EU with centralized databases in the EU, the terms themselves form the Article 28 processing agreement, and SOC 2 Type II is claimed with continuous monitoring. Against that, the terms allow systems and providers in the United States and other jurisdictions with SCCs or the Data Privacy Framework as safeguards, the subprocessor list is only handed over on request rather than published, and no AWS region is named.
Pricing transparency
inFlow Inventory
Four plans are published at 79, 229, 389 and 539 EUR per month billed annually with a 20% annual saving, plus a required 399 EUR one-time onboarding, optional packages at 799 and 2299 EUR, extra training at 169 EUR per hour and a Stockroom add-on from 29 EUR per month. The API add-on and the scanner hardware carry no published prices, lot tracking is left to select plans without naming them, the terms bill in USD while the pricing page shows EUR, and the captured pages give different statements on refunds — a money-back guarantee on one page and non-refundable fees in the terms.
Katana
The pricing pages give real structure: a $0 plan capped at 30 SKUs, the Core plan starting at $299 per month, and Advantage at custom pricing only; the terms add a base fee with one location included, per-location fees "as posted on the Web Site", and per-sales-order usage fees on an exponential decay model. The per-order fee amounts, the location fee, the Warehouse Management add-on and Value Pack prices are not visible on the captured pages, so I cannot compute an annual cost from what is public.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
inFlow Inventory
Katana
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
US by default
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
US CLOUD Act reach
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Katana higher: 3/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 2 of the 6 judges pick inFlow Inventory and 4 pick Katana. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is inFlow Inventory or Katana European?
inFlow Inventory is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Katana is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do inFlow Inventory and Katana store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — inFlow Inventory: In the US by default. Katana: its pages as captured do not say.
Do inFlow Inventory and Katana have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, Katana’s own pages state a free plan; inFlow Inventory’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.