Search for somewhere to buy a hijab and every result is a shop telling you about its own hijabs. Nobody shows you the market at once. So I went through all 4,980 hijabs in the directory — 74 houses — and priced each house by its median, converted to US dollars.
The spread runs from $6.34 to $80.49. That sounds like one market with expensive ends. It isn't. It's four bands, and the fabric decides most of where a house lands.
Under $10 — plain scarves, bought in colours
This band exists to be bought three at a time. Nothing here is trying to be an object.
Modest & Timeless (Norway) — a short range of six, median $6.34, the cheapest house in the index. Plain jersey in flat colours: the Burgundi Jersey Hijab.
Store WF (London) — 15 hijabs, median $6.82, and unusually varied for the price: cotton, viscose and crinkle rather than one cloth. The Cotton Black Scarves Hijab is the plainest of them.
Zahraa The Label (USA) — 230 hijabs, median $7.50, and the tightest range of any large house here: nothing below $5, nothing above $16.
LaMeera Moda (Dearborn, Michigan) — 74 hijabs, median $7.99, running up to $19. The crinkled chiffon scarf sits on the median.
Veiled (USA) — 283 hijabs, median $7.99, and 106 of them are chiffon. The Chiffon LITE is the piece the house is built around.
Headed Somewear (United States) — 27 hijabs, median $9.99, almost all plain modal: the Taupe Modal Plain Hijab.
$10 to $20 — where most of the market actually lives
This is the crowded middle, and it's crowded for a reason: it's where a hijab stops being disposable without becoming a purchase you think about.
iLoveModesty (Mississauga, Ontario) — 291 hijabs, median $11.00, chiffon-led with satin behind it: the Gossamer Green Textured Satin.
Nasiba (Australia) — 395 hijabs, the largest hijab catalogue on the site, median $15.11. Its Slip On is one of the cheapest ready-to-wear styles in the index.
Chic & Modesty (France) — 171 hijabs, median $15.14, jersey-weighted: the lux soft jersey in olive.
Niswa Fashion (Los Angeles) — 227 hijabs, median $16.00. The plain modals sit on it and the printed ones run to $18.
ByHasanat (UK) — 40 hijabs, median $16.27, mostly jersey: the Jersey Hijab in Turquoise.
Hidayah (Holbæk, Denmark) — 111 hijabs, median $18.72, and the only Danish house in the index. The Premium Plain Jersey is the whole proposition.
KlayTheLabel and Hawaa Clothing (both UK) — 38 and 40 hijabs, both at a $19.77 median, both sitting right on the line into the next band. Klay's Amber Premium Modal is $17.44; Hawaa's Black Polka Modal Lace is $19.77.
$20 to $30 — the names people search for
Nothing structural separates this band from the one above it. What changes is that these are the houses people look up by name.
Voile Chic (Canada) — 130 hijabs, median $20.00, including a non-slip chiffon sold as a named product rather than a claim.
AbayaButh (United Kingdom) — 192 hijabs, median $20.44, and the broadest fabric range in this band by some distance: eleven different fabrics appear in its titles against five to eight for its neighbours, organza and georgette among them.
Nour Al Houda (Sydney) — 248 hijabs, median $20.94, and the house most committed to selling the scarf and its cap together: 110 of its pieces are sets, more than any other house in the index. The Single Stitched Modal Set is the standard one.
Losyana (Nijmegen, Netherlands) — 394 hijabs, median $20.99, the second-largest hijab catalogue here by a single piece, and one of the fifteen houses stocking a proper instant style.
Vela Scarves (USA) — 339 hijabs, median $21.99, third-largest. The Ruching Lite line is the volume seller.
Haute Hijab (New York) — 142 hijabs, median $22.50, priced in steps rather than a curve: 62 pieces at exactly $20 and 33 more at $25. Sold on colour — Riverwalk Blue.
Jaida (Canada) — 49 hijabs, median $23.27. The Lunar Mist Luxury Chiffon is the house at its most typical.
Above $30 — five houses, spread very thin
The drop-off is sharp. Below $30 there are dozens of houses; above it there are five, and the gap between the cheapest and dearest of them is five times the width of the entire band beneath.
NOUREEN Modest Fashion (Antwerp) — 53 hijabs, median $31.49, running to $87 at the top. The Classy Liquid F25 sits on the median.
MERRACHI (Amsterdam) — 378 hijabs, median $33.83, and by a long way the largest catalogue above $30 — more hijabs than the other four houses in this band put together. Its Bamboo Jersey Scarf is the median piece.
LES Atelier (Netherlands) — 51 hijabs, median $35.00 and a floor at exactly that: nothing in the house is cheaper. The Bamboo Jersey is the range in one piece.
Aab (London) — 100 hijabs, median $37.00. Its Premium Modal is the same fabric the $10 houses sell.
Maison Hijab (Europe) — 34 hijabs, median $80.49, and that is not a median so much as a price list: every single piece costs exactly that, including the Marino Blue Jersey. It is the highest house median in the index, more than double the next.
The fabric is most of the price
Sort all 4,980 by what the title says they're made of, set the caps and inners aside, and the ladder is orderly. These are medians across the whole catalogue, not one house:
- Georgette — 77 pieces, median $10. The cheapest of the named fabrics, and barely sold: only five houses stock it.
- Chiffon — 706 pieces across 27 houses, median $15. The cheapest fabric that is widely available.
- Modal — 803 pieces across 30 houses, median $19.
- Satin — 206 pieces across 17 houses, median $20.
- Jersey — 1,408 pieces across 44 houses, median $22. The most-stocked fabric on the site by a wide margin, and not the cheapest despite it.
- Bamboo — 303 pieces across 23 houses, median $26.
- Silk — 94 pieces across 10 houses, median $32. The top of the ladder, and rarer than its reputation suggests.
Two cheaper cloths sit outside that ladder because they're sold as a texture rather than a fibre: crinkle and plain cotton scarves both run to a $9 median.
The list above compares houses as much as fabrics, so I checked it a second way: within a single house, stocking at least five of each. Eleven houses qualify, and jersey costs more than chiffon at seven of them — typically about 15% more, though Zahraa charges just over double ($16 against $7.50) and Modern Hijabi runs the other way ($15 against $20).
So the effect is real but modest, and smaller than the difference between two houses. If you are choosing on price, check you're comparing the same cloth first — then check the house, because that is where the bigger number is.
One honest limit: this counts what a title says. Around 1,380 of the 4,980 hijabs don't name a fabric at all, so they aren't in the numbers above.
Instant hijabs are a small market
Instant, slip-on and ready-to-wear between them describe just 123 pieces across 15 houses, at a median of $23 — a little above an ordinary mid-band scarf, but not the premium the convenience might suggest.
The cheapest is Veiled's Amira Bamboo Jersey Instant at $12, with Nasiba's Slip On close behind at $15. Losyana treats it as a line rather than a novelty.
The cost nobody counts: caps
590 of the pieces in the hijab category aren't scarves at all — they're undercaps, underscarves and bonnets, sold by 30 houses at a median of $7.50.
That is half a chiffon, and it's the line item that quietly turns a $15 hijab into a $23 one. If you're buying a first set, price the cap in at the start rather than discovering it at checkout — and check whether the house sells the pair together, because several in the $20–$30 band do.
What I'd take from all this
If you want colours and don't want to think about it, the sub-$10 band does one thing and does it. If you want a scarf you'll still be wearing in two years, $10 to $20 is where the market genuinely is, and the step up to $20–$30 buys you a name more reliably than a different cloth. Above $30 you are buying the house.
And in any band: georgette and chiffon, then modal, then jersey. That order is a real part of your bill — just a smaller part than which house you walk into.
Every price here was read from the houses' own listings on 26 August 2026 and converted to US dollars; shops move their prices, so treat these as the shape of the market rather than a quote. Everything above is in the hijabs and scarves section, which you can filter by house and sort by price.