Raspberry Pi has announced a fresh round of price rises for its range of popular single-board computers, owing to industry-wide memory costs.
It’s also launched a new version of the Pi 4 with 3GB RAM to sweeten the bad news, albeit somewhat.
This is the second price rise announced for Raspberry Pi in recent months. The RRP of Raspberry Pi boards were bumped in February, seeing up to $20 aded to the cost of Raspberry Pi 5 boards compared to their original price.
The Price increases this time around? A LOT more dramatic.
The Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) originally sold at ~$80 on its debut in 2023, that rose to ~$95 a few month ago. With the latest hike, the same board increases by a further $50, now sporting a price tag of ~$130.
For context, a 16 GB Raspberry Pi 5 in the UK now costs over £290. When it launched, it cost £180.
Compute Module 4, Compute Module 4S and Compute Module 5 also rise by $11.25-100 price across densities, and the Development Kit for Compute Module 5 and Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 jump by an extra $25 and $50 on their previous prices respectively.
It’s not just the bare boards affected. The compact Raspberry Pi 500 increases by $50, and you’ll pay a staggering $150 more for the fancier Raspberry Pi 500+ than you would’ve a few days ago.
Life moves fast, but…
Prices won’t be high forever
“We’ve said a number of times now that memory prices won’t remain at their current very high level indefinitely”, the company says, adding that “the circumstances in which we find ourselves are challenging, but in the future they will abate.”
“When they do, we will reverse our price increases, and until they do, we will continue to work hard to limit their impact in every way we can.”
Raspberry Pi 4 (3 GB) variant introduced
Last year, a 1 GB Raspberry Pi 5 was introduced, priced at $45, to ensure than an affordable option remained on the table (as most Pi uses aren’t predicated around running a full-blown desktop OS).
Earlier this year, an updated Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with a rejigged RAM chip layout was introduced. It enabled smaller density memory modules to be paired up – no performance difference (better or worse), but lower capacity RAM chips are cheaper to source.
Furthering that those affordability efforts, the company has now introduced a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 3 GB RAM. It costs $83.75 (US), which is 15% less than the new price for 4 GB model.
It’s not clear yet if the 3 GB variant uses a single RAM chip or a combination of two.
Either way, it’s unlikely a 3 GB model would have been introduced were it not for the continued pressure on memory component prices fuelled, in large, by the demand from AI data centres.
Memory prices are reported to be coming down (as memory production capacity has ramped up), but it’ll be a while for those savings are reflected in consumer prices.