The Most Expensive Razors: Are Sapphire Blades Best?

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The most expensive razors boggle the mind. While razors probably aren’t the first thing to come to mind when you think about products made for showing off, it is hardly surprising that something so universal as a razor should have such extremes of price.

Afterall, a razor is a perfect alpha-male product with a big opportunity for luxury. Like a car, you can buy one for anything from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. There’s a good chance both will get you from A to B, but only one will leave such a profound impression on onlookers.

The only limitation is there aren’t many places you can show it off, but then gyms offer an opportunity while many users may enjoy ornamenting their bathroom with such treasures to impress any special guests.

The fact is most people spend too much on razors using plastic cartridges that perform poorly and cost a lot in the long run. You can choose to save money and get a better shave from a traditional safety razor – you can find the best here. However, for a select few a more premium price tag appeals.

What are the most expensive razors you can buy today? Here we’ll take you through the most expensive razors from just over $100 to $100,000.

The Most Expensive Razors

6. Supply Single Edge 2.0 – $

The Supply razor is a Kickstarter sensation that uses a special injection-moulding process usually reserved for pecision-engineered medical and aerospace technologies.

The Supply razor comes in two price points based on whether you go for alloy or stainless steel. The alloy version is not much more expensive than a lot of alloy safety razors like the Merkur Futur.

Once you’ve bought the razor, the ongoing cost of the Supply razor is actually very low as it uses injector razor blades that are open-source and have been around for decades.

While the Supply razor is certainly a premium razor and justifiably one of the most expensive razors it offers exceptional value for a fine piece of cutting edge design.

5. Feather AS-D2 – $

Feather All Stainless Steel Double-Edge Razor, Model AS-D2

The Feather AS-D2 is hardly an unusual safety razor – in fact we rated it highly in our list of the best safety razors. However it is a very expensive safety razor at well over $100. That is because it is made of marine-grade surgical steel. It offers a beautiful weight and balance, although is regarded as a very mild razor. More about that in our Feather AS-D2 review.

4. HOMMAGE Madrid – $$

HOMMAGE Madrid Razor

We discovered the Hommage Madrid when we were trying to find the most expensive straight razors. Ten years ago French grooming brand Hommage produced a $30,000 straight razor made of Damascene steel. That would have placed it as the most expensive straight razor but as a limited edition it doesn’t seem to be made anymore. You’ll just have to stick with our list of the best straight razors overall.

However, the Hommage Monaco and Madrid are the standard Hommage razors and still makes our list of the most expensive razors, although it’s a shame that the blade cartridges they use are simple Gillette Mach3.

3. Gillette Heated Razor – $$

Gillette Gillettelabs Heated Razor Starter Kit - 1 Handle, 2 Blade Refills, 1 Charging Dock

Gillette appears to have been trying to produce a heated razor for years according to patents going back as far as the early 2000s. However, the final product the Gillette heated razor came out in 2019. art

It claims to recreate the feel of a hot-towel shave with the convenience of a cartridge razor. Nevertheless in our Gillette heated razor review we found it lacking. For one it is still just a cartridge razor and the heat is so focused within the head that you don’t get the surrounding ambient warmth of a real hot towel shave.

Nevertheless it remains a top premium choice for many shavers and seems to be the flagship product over at The Art of Shaving – although note that AoS is owned by Proctor and Gamble who also own Gillette.

2. OneBlade Genesis – $$$$

OneBlade Genesis

If you really want to indulge, the OneBlade razor is a modern razor developed by a team of engineers on a quest to bring real innovation to the shaving industry with an award-winning single blade razor. This has all the benefits of shaving with a safety razor but is stylishly upgraded for the future.

The flagship OneBlade Genesis razor competes with the Gillette heated razor on price and features an all stainless steel design, is individually numbered, hand polished and is available in precious metal finishes including 24 Karat Gold and 18 Karat Rose Gold.

OneBlade is the product of a American financial publisher called Porter Stansberry who enjoyed a straight razor shave from a barber in Italy so much he wanted to replicate the experience in a more convenient razor.

1. Zafirro Iridium – $$$$$$

Zafirro Iridium

Zafirro is truly another level when it comes to the most expensive razors. It combines a diamon-studded Rolls Royce kind of prestige with technological that sounds straight from Silicon Valley.

Over eight years in Portland, Oregon, expertise in fields as varied as rocket engine manufacturing, nanotechnology, and particle physics were required, as well as manufacturing and technology expertise from around the world to create a sapphire-blade razor.

Their goal was to create the biggest innovation in blade technology for 100 years and they achieved it by using sapphire blades that are just 80 atoms deep at the tip.

Like many cutting edge innovations like Tesla cars, they’ve followed a strategy of first producing a premium luxury option – like the Roadster – in order to fund the development of the more mainstream affordable product. The latter is the Zafirro Iridium. It costs $100,000 and is a limited edition of 99.

The razor handle centerpiece is 99.95% pure iridium, the strongest and densest functional metal on the planet, mainly derived from meteorites, and 10 times more rare than platinum – although read on and you’ll see there’s still plenty of platinum in the Zafirro razor.

One of the primary uses of iridium has been rocket engine components because of its extreme durability.

Platinum screws on the Zafirro Iridium are of a higher purity than most jewelry and custom machined to extremely tight tolerances on CNC Swiss screw micromachines designed for advanced biotech applications.

If you’re feeling a little more frugal the Zafirro Gold is a mere $18000. However, they were nearing completion of their ultimate aim of a sapphire razor for everyone with the Zafirro Z2 at $200, although their 2016 Kickstarter campaign proved unsuccessful. Indeed at the time of writing the checkout pages on Zafirro’s website are inactive, suggesting this pioneering venture may have been just a bridge too far.

So for now it seems like your best bet for a premium razor is the OneBlade Genesis.

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