Raspberry Pi Prices Rise Again Amid Memory Shortages
▼ Summary
– Raspberry Pi is implementing a second round of price increases for several of its single-board computers due to parts costs more than doubling.
– The increases affect all Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, and Compute Module 4 and 5, products that have 2GB or more of memory.
– The new price hikes will add $10 to $60 depending on the memory configuration, following previous increases of $5 to $25 in December.
– The price increases do not affect the 1GB variants of the Pi 4 and Pi 5, the Pi 400, or older models like the Pi 3 and Pi Zero.
– The company’s CEO expects memory pricing challenges to continue into 2026 but views the current high-cost situation as temporary.
The cost of building a Raspberry Pi is climbing once more, marking a second price hike in just a few months. The company’s CEO, Eben Upton, has pointed to a severe shortage of memory components as the primary driver, noting that the cost of some parts has more than doubled over the last quarter. This latest adjustment impacts a wide range of popular models, specifically those equipped with 2GB of RAM or more.
Effective soon, customers will see notable increases across the board. For the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, as well as the Compute Module 4 and 5, the new pricing adds $10 to the 2GB models, $15 to the 4GB versions, $30 to the 8GB variants, and a substantial $60 to the top-tier 16GB configurations. This follows a previous round of increases in December, which saw prices rise by amounts ranging from $5 to $25.
Not every product in the lineup is affected by this change. The company has confirmed that the 1GB versions of the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 remain at their current price points, as does the Raspberry Pi 400 all-in-one PC. Older models, including the Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero, are also shielded from the increase. Upton explained that these products use a different type of memory, LPDDR2, for which Raspberry Pi holds a multi-year inventory, insulating them from the current market volatility.
The broader memory market is experiencing significant constraints, a situation Upton expects to persist. He indicated that 2026 looks likely to be another challenging year for memory pricing, suggesting that relief may not be immediate. Despite this sobering outlook, the CEO maintains a perspective that the current pressures are a temporary phase. The company anticipates being able to reverse these price increases once the supply chain stabilizes and component costs begin to normalize, though a specific timeline for that recovery remains uncertain.
(Source: The Verge)
