arcgis 10.7 - Spatial Join works when invoked through ArcMap GUI, but "Out of Memory Error" when using ArcCatalog "Spatial Join" tool?

(This question was inspired through the discussion here Spatial Join works when invoked through ArcMap GUI, but "Out of Memory Error" through ArcPy)

I want to join an input feature class (~11,000 polygons) with another feature class (~31,000,000 polygons). When I do this trough ArcMaps 'Join - based on spatial location' tool, it takes quite long but eventually succeeds (adding 'Sum' for all joined fields). I monitored memory consumption throughout and it seems 'healthy' to me (not even going close to my 64 GB RAM).

When I try to do the same with the 'Spatial Join' tool:

I run into an "Out of Memory" error after a few minutes. What's strange about it is that, again, as far I can tell from the task manager, it's nowhere close from actually running out of my memory.

So, I believe I'm doing exactly the same thing through ArcCatalog as through the ArcMap GUI, yet getting no result. What is the analog of the "Join Data" in terms of ArcCatalog functions?