Swarf vs Katana

Katana is for product companies.
You run a job shop.

Katana is a cloud inventory and manufacturing tool built for small product companies. Apparel, cosmetics, food and beverage, furniture, electronics. Shops that make a thing, stock it, and sell it on shopify or amazon. For that world its genuinely good software, well designed, fast to set up.

Machine shops dont work that way. You dont stock a product, you make one offs or small runs from customer prints. You dont sell on shopify, you quote directly to whoever sent the rfq. Half of katanas features are about amazon sync, bom management, batch lot tracking, multi currency. None of that matters if youre making 50 pieces of an aluminum bracket for a guy down the road.

swarf.shop/board/precision-parts-inc
QUEUED3
J-2847
AL bracket (50)
Miller Precision · Mar 28
J-2849
SS dowel pins (200)
Acme Mfg · Apr 4
J-2851
Ti mount plate (2)
Valley Machine · Mar 21
CUTTING3
J-2840
Motor housing (12)
HAAS VF-2 · Mar 19
J-2843
Gear blanks 4140 (80)
DMG MORI · Mar 25
J-2845
Shaft 303SS (25)
Mazak QT · Mar 26
QC2
J-2838
Valve body 6061 (6)
Parker · OVERDUE
J-2841
Fixture plate (1)
Internal · Mar 24
SHIP2
J-2835
Manifold block (4)
Summit Fab · Mar 18
J-2836
Bronze bushing (100)
Walk-in · Mar 19
DONE12
J-2830
Adapter plate (8)
Deere · Mar 14
Side by side

Swarf vs Katana

Feature
Swarf
Katana
Built for
Job shops
Product companies
Price (5 users)
$49/mo flat
$299/mo
Per-user pricing
Setup time
2 min
6 weeks
Drag-and-drop job board
Attach customer prints
Native iOS & Android apps
Shop floor TV mode
Good fit for machine shops
Shopify / Amazon sync
Batch / lot tracking
Multi-currency
Bill of materials (BOM)
Warehouse management

Katanas a good tool. Just not for you.

Katana nailed the small manufacturer selling on shopify market. If you were cranking out leather wallets or boutique chocolate bars, id tell you go look at it. Its fast, its clean, its priced fairly for what it does.

Machine shops are a totally different business. You dont sell products. You sell machining time to whoever walks in with a print. Theres no inventory of finished goods, theres no shopify store, theres no sku catalog. Youre quoting a custom job, running it through your machines, shipping it, and moving on to the next one.

Swarf skips all the product company stuff and just does job tracking. No amazon sync, no bom, no batch tracking, no warehouse. Drag the job through columns, see whats running on every machine, attach the print to the card, ship it. Thats the whole thing.

Pricing

One price. The whole shop.

$49/month

Unlimited users. Unlimited jobs. Unlimited files. No per-seat surprises.

Unlimited users
Unlimited active jobs
File attachments
Real-time sync
Works offline
Machine tracking
Search & filter
iOS & Android apps
Start free trial

14 days free. No credit card required.

Built for shops that make things,
not shops that buy software.

Try it free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Start free trial
Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play