tldr: Katalon publishes its prices, which already puts it ahead of half the market. Studio Enterprise is $1,000 per seat per year for the first three seats. The full True Automation bundle is $1,699 per seat per year for the first three seats and $2,000 from the fourth. The catch is the add-ons: the Runtime Engine and each cloud execution pack are separate licenses that can double a small team's bill.
Katalon is a test automation platform built around Katalon Studio, an IDE for web, mobile, API, and desktop testing, with a cloud layer for test management and execution on top. Unlike Tricentis Tosca, which hides everything behind a sales call, Katalon lists its prices publicly and sells online by credit card. This page covers current Katalon Studio pricing and the platform bundles built around it, checked against Katalon's pricing page on 31 July 2026.
The transparency is real. The complexity is too. Katalon splits the product into two purchasable halves plus a bundle, and the execution add-ons that most teams eventually need are priced separately from the seats.
The three packages
Katalon Studio Enterprise is the IDE alone: test authoring for web, mobile, API, and desktop. It costs $229 per seat per month, or $1,000 per seat per year, with the annual figure discounted for the first three seats.
True Platform is the cloud half: test management, reporting, analytics, and cloud execution for manual and automated tests. It runs $59 per seat per month or $700 per seat per year.
True Automation bundles the two into full lifecycle coverage. Annually it is $1,699 per seat for the first three seats and $2,000 per seat from the fourth. Monthly it is $142 per seat for the first three and $167 after that.
A custom Enterprise tier sits above all three. There is a 30-day free trial of True Automation and Test Execution Cloud, no credit card required.
The add-ons are where the bill grows
Seats let people write tests. Running them at any scale is licensed separately:
- Katalon Runtime Engine, the headless execution license for CI, is $1,749 per year
- Cross-Browser Cloud is $1,899 per session per year
- Native Mobile App Cloud is $1,899 per session per year
- Private devices, production insights, private SaaS, and premier support are all custom quotes
The Runtime Engine deserves the most attention. Without it, tests run from the Studio interface. The moment you want scheduled or CI-triggered runs, which is the point of automation, you are buying it.
What a real team pays
Take a five-person QA team on annual True Automation, running tests in CI against multiple browsers.
Seats: three at $1,699 plus two at $2,000 is $9,097. One Runtime Engine license adds $1,749. One Cross-Browser Cloud session adds $1,899. Total: $12,745 per year, or about $1,060 a month.
Two things stand out in that number. The sticker impression of "about $1,699 a seat" understates the real cost by roughly 40 percent once execution is licensed. And a single Runtime Engine license is one concurrent headless run, so teams that want parallel CI execution buy more than one.
How Katalon pricing compares
Against the enterprise tools, Katalon is cheap. Tricentis Tosca starts north of €20,000 a year before add-ons. Against modern codeless platforms, Katalon sits mid-pack: more expensive than self-serve AI tools, cheaper than quote-only enterprise suites.
The comparison that matters is what the money buys. Katalon licenses software; your team still writes, runs, and maintains every test. Bug0 Managed runs $2,500 a month flat and covers the opposite model: a dedicated engineer plans and builds your coverage on the Passmark engine, the tests self-heal when your UI changes, and every result is verified before it reaches you. Five Katalon seats plus add-ons plus the engineers to operate them costs a multiple of either number.
Is Katalon worth the cost?
Katalon fits teams that want to own their automation, have people to staff it, and prefer a mature IDE over code-first frameworks. The pricing is honest and the trial is real, so evaluating it costs nothing but time.
Budget for the whole stack, not the seat price. If your plan involves CI execution and cross-browser coverage, the add-ons are not optional, and the five-person example above is the realistic floor. And if the goal is coverage rather than tooling, compare the loaded annual figure against what a managed service delivers for less operational effort.
FAQs
How much does Katalon cost per year?
Studio Enterprise is $1,000 per seat per year for the first three seats. True Platform is $700 per seat per year. The True Automation bundle is $1,699 per seat per year for the first three seats and $2,000 from the fourth. Execution add-ons are separate: the Runtime Engine is $1,749 per year and each cloud execution pack is $1,899 per year. Figures checked 31 July 2026.
Does Katalon have a free version?
There is a 30-day free trial of True Automation and Test Execution Cloud with no credit card required. Katalon has historically offered a free tier of the Studio IDE with limited features, but the paid packages above are the supported path for teams.
What is the Katalon Runtime Engine and do I need it?
It is the headless execution license that lets tests run outside the Studio interface, which is what CI pipelines, scheduled runs, and parallel execution require. If automation is meant to run on every build rather than on an engineer's laptop, you need at least one license at $1,749 per year, and one per concurrent run after that.
Can I buy Katalon without talking to sales?
Yes. Katalon sells the published tiers online by credit card or bank transfer, which is unusual in this market. Only the custom Enterprise tier and specialized add-ons require a sales conversation.
How does Katalon pricing compare to alternatives?
Cheaper than quote-only enterprise suites like Tosca, more expensive than most self-serve AI-native tools. A realistic five-seat setup with CI execution and cross-browser cloud lands around $12,745 per year for licenses alone, before the salary cost of the team operating it.
