You can get a zigbee radio that can serve as a hub for a few bucks, but if you want the turnkey consumer experience, you also need Xiaomi's zigbee hub which runs around 50 bucks. With that you also get an iOS app that integrates with homekit. Xiaomi makes a lot of other zigbee products at a similar price range that work with it.
You're not going to find any acceptable wifi solutions in the battery powered sensor category (there are a lot of other reasons that make wifi non-ideal for this), so unfortunately a hub is probably in your future for any option.
EDIT: BTLE devices may also be an option, but IoT applications my tldr option is that BT is too complicated to be worth it unless you need something you can't get elsewhere.