Catios in Australia

A catio is a cat enclosure attached to the house, entered from a window, a door or a cat flap, so the cat lets itself out rather than being carried out. That single difference changes the price, the approval question and often the whole shape of the build. The word is also the one winning: "catio" is now searched about 6,600 times a month in Australia against 5,400 for "cat netting", and it has grown by roughly 56 per cent in the three years of keyword history we work from while netting has fallen.

Prices and specifications checked 12 September 2026

What makes a catio a catio

Nothing about the structure. A catio and a freestanding enclosure are frequently the same welded panels in the same box, and several Australian sellers apply both words to one product. What separates them is where the thing sits and how the cat gets in.

• A catio is attached. It butts against an external wall, and the cat enters from inside the house. Access is a window, a door left ajar behind a mesh screen, a cat flap in a wall or door, or a tunnel run from a window to a run further down the yard.
• A freestanding enclosure is not. It stands on its own in the yard and someone has to take the cat to it. For a cat that is out for an hour in the afternoon that is fine. For containment as a daily arrangement it means the enclosure only works when somebody is home to open it.

The practical test is whether the cat can use it unsupervised. That is the reason people pay the extra for a window opening or a tunnel, and it is why the connection hardware below is worth costing properly rather than treating as an accessory.

What a catio costs

These are the 11 products in our data that the seller itself calls a catio, priced as published. The price per square metre column is ours: not one Australian seller publishes a floor area, so every area here was computed by this project from the seller's own published width and depth, and each product record names which pair of numbers it came from.

The headline range is $320 to $1,999, and it is close to meaningless on its own. Costed by floor area the same products run from $108.02 per square metre for the Somerzby Manor Catio to $505.80 for the Samland Outdoor Wooden Cat Enclosure Catio with Wheels, Double Cat Houses and Roof. Those two are a netted frame and a coated steel weld-mesh run, which is most of the explanation: the cheap end of this category is netting stretched over poles, and the dear end is panels you could stand on.

One of them has no price per square metre at all, because the seller publishes no dimensions for it. That is Somerzby Oasis Catio, sold at $320 with nothing published to say how big it is. We record that as an absence rather than measuring a photograph.

The connection is a separate purchase

Every seller prices the run and the way in separately, and the way in is the part that makes it a catio. Published prices for the connecting pieces:

$55 to $349 depending on what you are joining and how far it has to travel. Two details in that table are easy to miss. Betta Pet Systems prices its tunnel by the metre rather than by the section, so a long run costs what it costs rather than snapping to a fixed length. And Omlet's window box needs a separate window board, published at $109, to fit it to a window at all, which is a second line item on a part that costs less than the board does.

Attaching it to the house changes the approval question

A freestanding mesh box in the middle of a yard is, in most places, treated like any other small garden structure. Bolt the same box to an external wall, roof it and cut an opening into the dwelling, and it starts to look like an addition to the building rather than a thing in the garden. Floor area, height, distance to the boundary and whether the structure is attached are the usual triggers, and they vary by state and by council.

No seller in this category addresses it. Not one product page in our data mentions building approval, planning approval, setbacks or strata. What that means in practice is that the approval question is entirely yours, and it is cheaper to ask before the flat-pack arrives than after. We keep the triggers and what they turn on in the building approval register, and whether you are required to contain the cat in the first place is a different question again, covered in the council register.

Three things no catio seller will tell you

1. Nobody publishes a wind rating. 0 of 68. No seller references AS/NZS 1170.2, names a wind region A, B, C or D, or states a wind speed the product is engineered to. A 1.8 metre flat-pack is sold on the same page to a buyer in suburban Melbourne and a buyer in Cairns with no published basis for either. The closest anything comes is Somerzby telling you to secure the Manor Catio to the ground in windy areas, and Catnets shipping ground pegs. Those are instructions, not ratings.
2. Nobody publishes a floor area either. Every area on this page is computed by us from published dimensions, for 58 of the 68 records we collected. It is the one number that makes a small expensive catio and a large cheap one comparable, and it is the number the whole market omits.
3. Capacity claims are inverted market-wide. Only 9 of 68 records carry a cat capacity at all, and where they exist they contradict each other. One seller claims more than four to six cats in 1.76 square metres. Another claims one to two cats in 1.57 square metres. A fourfold disagreement at nearly the same floor area is not a specification, so we report capacity as a claim and never as data.

Catio or netting

These are the same job done two ways, and the vocabulary is moving faster than the products are. "Catio" is the growing term and "cat netting" is the falling one, but netting is still searched about 5,400 times a month here and it remains the cheaper answer per square metre by a wide margin.

The honest split: net the space if the space already exists. A verandah, a courtyard, a pergola or a balcony with a roof over it can be enclosed for less than a framed run costs, because you are only buying mesh and a way to hold it. Buy or build the framed catio if there is no space to net, if you want a structure that stands on its own, or if the mesh needs to be tight enough for a kitten. The full cost comparison, and what netting does and does not hold, is on the cat netting page.

The cheapest way to start

Not every catio is a structure in the yard. The smallest version is a box that sits in a window opening, which is the cheapest entry point in the category and the one most renters can actually install: see window catios. For an apartment or a unit the question is usually a balcony, where drilling and body corporate approval matter more than price does, and that is covered in balcony cat enclosures. If you would rather compare every framed unit on the market rather than only the ones called catios, all 58 of them are costed side by side in price per square metre, and the 54 with both a price and a computable area are ranked there.

Common questions

What is the difference between a catio and a cat enclosure?

A catio is attached to the house and entered from inside it, usually through a window, a door or a cat flap. A freestanding enclosure sits in the yard and the cat has to be carried out to it. The structures are often identical, and several sellers use both words for the same product, but the attachment is what matters: it decides whether the cat can let itself out, and it can change whether the structure needs a building or planning approval. The 11 products in our data that a seller calls a catio run from $320 to $1,999.

How much does a catio cost in Australia?

Between $320 and $1,999 for the structure alone, across the products we could source. Floor area matters more than the sticker: costed per square metre the same set runs from $108.02 to $505.80 per square metre, a spread of roughly 4.7 times. Add the connection to the house, which is always a separate line item, and freight, which only one seller publishes.

Does a catio need council approval?

It depends on the council, the floor area, the height and whether the structure is attached to the dwelling. Attaching it to the house is the part that most often moves it from "no approval needed" to "ask first", because an attached roofed structure can be read as an addition to the building rather than a garden item. No seller answers this on its product page. We keep a separate register of what triggers an approval, and the honest starting position is that you ask your council before you order, not after.

Is a catio better than netting an existing space?

Not automatically. Netting is cheaper per square metre and covers space you already have, such as a verandah, a courtyard or a balcony. A framed catio gives a tighter, more durable mesh, a roof that sheds rain and a structure that does not depend on what it is tensioned against. If the space already exists and is roughly the right shape, net it. If it does not, or if the cat needs to reach it unaccompanied from a window, build or buy the framed thing.