Linear, branched and cyclic alkanes are important intermediates and end products of the chemical industry and are nowadays mainly obtained from fossil resources. In search for alternatives, biomass feedstocks are often presented as a renewable carbon source for the production of fuels, chemicals and materials. However, providing a complete market for all these applications seems unrealistic due to both financial and logistic issues. Despite the very large scale of current alkane-based fuel applications, biomass definitely has the potential to offer a partial solution to the fuel business. For the smaller market of chemicals and materials, a transition to biomass as main carbon source is more realistic and even probably unavoidable in the long term. The appropriate use and further development of integrated chemo- and biotechnological (catalytic) process strategies will be crucial to successfully accomplish this petro-to-bio feedstock transition. Furthermore, a selection of the most promising technologie