Updated 25 August 2026 · 434 listings from 18 sellers in the US and Japan.
Japanese tea is sold in units designed to stop you comparing. One page of search results will quote you dollars per gram, per ounce, per hundred grams and per pound — and the cheapest-looking number is often the most expensive tea.
This page puts everything in the same unit, twice: what a gram costs, and what a serving costs.
What a cup costs
| Tea | Per serving | Serving size |
|---|---|---|
| Matcha (US) | $2.34 | 2 g bowl |
| Gyokuro (US) | $4.00 | 5 g pot |
| Hojicha (US) | $0.99 | 3 g cup |
| Genmaicha (US) | $0.78 | 3 g cup |
Matcha costs more than twice what a cup of hojicha costs, and gyokuro — brewed with a lot of leaf — is the most expensive thing you can put in a pot.
What a gram costs
| Tea | Typical price | Most fall between | Cheapest to dearest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matcha (US) | $1.17/g | $0.66 – $1.90 | $0.18 – $7.50 |
| Gyokuro, loose leaf (US) | $0.80/g | $0.51 – $1.50 | $0.29 – $4.50 |
| Hojicha powder (US) | $0.34/g | $0.26 – $0.66 | $0.20 – $0.93 |
| Hojicha, loose leaf (US) | $0.33/g | $0.21 – $0.60 | $0.16 – $1.00 |
| Hojicha powder (Japan) | $0.31/g | $0.20 – $0.36 | $0.10 – $0.48 |
| Genmaicha, loose leaf (US) | $0.26/g | $0.21 – $0.29 | $0.14 – $0.36 |
| Hojicha, loose leaf (Japan) | $0.19/g | $0.10 – $0.25 | $0.05 – $0.62 |
The most expensive tea here costs about 150 times the cheapest — $7.50 a gram for a Kettl matcha in a 20 g tin, five cents a gram for Japanese loose-leaf hojicha. Both are green tea from the same species of plant.
That is why a $30 tin and a $60 tin tell you nothing until you know how much is in them.
Don’t assume hojicha is the cheap swap
Across the whole market, matcha costs about three and a half times hojicha. That figure is true and nearly useless, because it mostly reflects which companies sell which teas.
Inside a single shop, the gap is usually smaller — and it varies enormously:
| Shop | Matcha | Hojicha | Hojicha is cheaper by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ippodo (US) | $1.24/g | $0.16/g | 87% |
| Kettl | $1.90/g | $0.55/g | 71% |
| Rocky’s Matcha | $1.80/g | $0.55/g | 69% |
| Rishi | $1.13/g | $0.53/g | 53% |
| Jade Leaf | $0.60/g | $0.34/g | 43% |
| Matchaful | $1.29/g | $0.74/g | 43% |
At Ippodo, switching to hojicha saves you almost everything. At Jade Leaf it saves you less than half.
If you are trying hojicha to spend less, the number that matters is your shop’s, not the market’s.
What crossing the Pacific costs
| US | Japan | How much more the US costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matcha (six identical Ippodo tins) | $1.05/g | $0.52/g | about twice |
| Hojicha, loose leaf | $0.33/g | $0.19/g | about three-quarters more |
| Hojicha powder | $0.34/g | $0.31/g | roughly the same |
The matcha comparison is the cleanest one we have: six of the same Ippodo tins, priced on both sides. They cost roughly twice as much in the US.
Whether importing yourself is worth it depends on shipping, on how much you buy at once, and on how quickly you get through it. But the gap is real and it is large.
What the price tells you — and what it doesn’t
Price does not tell you how much the seller discloses. We read the full description of 133 matcha listings and counted the checkable claims — cultivar, harvest timing, region, shade-growing, mill. Expensive shops are not reliably more forthcoming than cheap ones.
Price does not tell you the grade. “Ceremonial” appears on tins from $0.60 to $2.80 a gram. It is not a regulated term.
Price does tell you the format. Small tins cost far more per gram than large bags of the same tea, at every shop we have measured. If you are buying to drink rather than to try, buy the bigger size.
Price does tell you the origin claim. Naming a town near Uji costs about three times what naming nothing costs.
How to use this page
- Convert to per gram before you compare anything. Divide the price by the grams in the package. Nothing else on a shop page is comparable.
- Then convert to per serving. That is what you actually spend.
- Check the size. A price that looks high often just means a small tin.
- Compare within a shop before comparing across shops. Shop-to-shop gaps are bigger than grade-to-grade gaps.
Prices from public product feeds, collected 24–25 August 2026. Japanese prices are from Yunomi, converted at ¥160 to the dollar. US matcha figures exclude sweetened latte mixes; hojicha retail means packages of 200 g or under. The full files are available to download.
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