Katalon

Commercial low-code test automation platform built on Appium and Selenium, priced per seat plus separate cloud session add-ons

As of 1 September 2026, Katalon's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A test automation platform wrapping Appium and Selenium with a lower-code authoring layer, test management and AI agents, sold per seat with cloud execution sold separately by the session. Softwr lists it under Testing. Katalon is made by Katalon Inc, available on Web, Windows, macOS.

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Overview

What Katalon does

Katalon Studio provides a lower-code interface for building web, API, mobile and desktop UI tests on top of the same underlying open source engines much of the industry uses, Selenium for web and Appium for mobile, packaged with recording, a built-in object repository and reusable test steps aimed at teams with less deep coding expertise than a raw Selenium or Appium setup requires. True Automation, its higher tier, adds test management and AI agents for tasks such as test generation and self-healing locators. The pricing structure is the detail a buyer needs before comparing it to open source Selenium or Appium on cost: Katalon Studio itself is $180 a month per seat at list, discounted to $84 a month per seat annually for the first three seats, and running tests in Katalon's cloud, either cross-browser or mobile device sessions, is billed separately again at $197 per session monthly or $1,899 annually. A team doing real cross-browser or device cloud execution is stacking three charges, seats, platform tier, and per-session cloud, not paying one number. Buyers are QA teams wanting a faster authoring experience than raw Selenium or Appium scripting, often with less senior automation engineers on staff, and willing to pay for that productivity gain. The trade-off against building directly on open source Selenium and Appium is straightforward: Katalon costs real money per seat and per cloud session for a layer of convenience that a strong engineering team can replicate for free with more upfront setup effort.

What people use it for

A QA team wanting a lower-code authoring layer over Selenium and Appium for testers without deep coding backgrounds
An organisation wanting test management and AI-assisted test maintenance bundled with automation authoring in one commercial product
A team needing occasional cross-browser or device cloud sessions without maintaining its own device lab or Selenium Grid
An enterprise wanting a single vendor and support contract for test authoring, management and cloud execution together

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Katalon.

Real cost stacks three separate charges, per-seat authoring licence, the True Platform add-on for test management, and per-session cloud execution, so the advertised seat price significantly understates total spend for a team running cloud tests regularly.
Since it is built on Selenium and Appium underneath, a team with strong automation engineers can replicate most of the core capability for free, paying only for optional cloud execution elsewhere, making Katalon's value proposition mainly about authoring speed rather than unique capability.
The steep first-three-seats discount versus the fourth-seat-and-beyond price means cost per seat rises sharply as a team scales past three testers on Katalon Studio alone.
Low-code recorded tests can become brittle and hard to maintain at scale in the same way any record-and-playback approach does, requiring the team to still write real code for complex scenarios.
Enterprise pricing is quote-only, so the largest deployments lose the pricing transparency the published seat tiers otherwise offer.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Katalon

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Katalonvs
Selenium
Selenium: If your team has the engineering capacity to script directly against Selenium without paying for a low-code layer
Katalonvs
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs: If you specifically need cloud device and browser execution without Katalon's authoring layer
Katalonvs
Testsigma
Testsigma: If you want a similarly low-code commercial platform with a different pricing structure to compare against Katalon

Pricing

What Katalon costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Katalon Studio

$84 /mo

Annual billing, first three seats at 84 US dollars a seat a month
Fourth seat and beyond at 150 US dollars a seat a month
Low-code recording, object repository, Selenium and Appium engine underneath

True Automation

$167 /mo

Annual billing, per seat
Includes Studio features plus test management and AI agents
True Platform TestOps and TestCloud sold as a further add-on at 700 US dollars a seat a year

Enterprise

On request

Custom quote for private SaaS and hybrid licensing
Dedicated support
Negotiated cloud session volume

Capabilities

Features

Low-code test recording
Records UI interactions and generates test steps without hand-written automation code
Built on Selenium and Appium
Uses the open source web and mobile automation engines underneath its authoring layer
Object repository
Reusable, centrally managed UI element definitions across test scripts
AI-assisted test generation
True Automation tier adds AI agents for generating and maintaining test scripts
TestCloud execution
Cross-browser and mobile device cloud sessions, billed separately per session
TestOps management
Test planning, execution tracking and reporting dashboard on the True Platform add-on

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Katalon free?

No, though a 30-day free trial with no credit card is offered; the product is commercial with per-seat licensing.

Does Katalon replace Selenium and Appium?

No, it is built on top of them; Katalon adds a low-code authoring layer, test management and cloud execution rather than a different automation engine.

Is cloud execution included in the seat price?

No, TestCloud cross-browser and mobile sessions are billed separately, at 197 US dollars a session monthly or 1,899 annually per session.

Keep looking

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Katalon, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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