Propane dehydrogenation has been used industrially as a non-oil-based propylene production process, but it strongly depends on precious-metal catalysts such as supported Pt materials, which dominate most propane dehydrogenation processes currently used in industry. Catalysts with earth-abundant metals have been explored with a view to replacing Pt, but their performances remain inadequate. Here we report a cobaltosilicate zeolite catalyst, which has solely tetrahedral cobalt sites and none of the unstable cobalt species in the zeolite crystals that are characteristic of conventional cobaltosilicate materials. This catalyst exhibits properties   that could be attractive for industrial application, including sufficient propylene productivity, high stability and facile regenerability. Moreover, this system outperforms the benchmark supported Pt–Sn catalysts under equivalent conditions.