Hot off the back of price rises it announced in October, the Raspberry Pi Foundation today said the cost of its Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computers is going up again.
From November 2026, the Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB RAM rises by $80, now priced at $385 from approved resellers. The model launched at $120 back in 2025, rose to $205 in early 2026, and later incremental increases got it to $305.
And it’s not the only model whose price tag will be making wallets wince.
A $40 price hike hits the Raspberry Pi 5 Compute Module (CM5) with 16 GB RAM.
For now at least, the (not exactly cheap) Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC is unchanged.
The rises are, of course, not ones the foundation makes willing. It’s down to the ongoing memory crisis caused by colossal demand from the AI industry and data centre hyperscalers, exacerbated by a lack of diversified supply chain.
It says it looks forward to “rolling back our price increases when memory costs fall once again”. When will that be? Some industry bods say not until the mid-2030s.
Raspberry Pi is putting forward to creative solutions to try and help. It launched a 3GB model of its Raspberry Pi 4 and, earlier in the crisis, a dual-RAM model using lower-density chips. It also suggests would-be buyers consider how much RAM they actually need.
But it is the case that smaller hardware companies are hit worse by industry volatility, mainly because of (a lack of) purchasing power.
This year saw Pine64 nope out of making Linux devices at all due to the compounding factors from component cost rises, which had inflated to the point it rendered their whole ‘affordable’ hardware pitch to encourage hacking and tinkering utterly moot.
You’re to blame, buddy
OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently blamed memory supply chain issues on selfish users buying up RAM to run open-source AI models locally, saying it’s “quite terrible”1 for people to have “a bunch of the world’s limited supply of [DRAM] sitting in their own computer”.
If you’re reading this, tutting at the latest round of price rises, have some self awareness.
That monster gaming rig or a tricked-out workstation you’re using? Do the altruistic, public-spirited thing and remove the RAM and post it to your nearest data centre.
They need it more than you, sucker.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently blamed memory supply chain issues on selfish users buying up RAM to run open-source AI models locally, saying it’s “quite terrible”1 for people to have “a bunch of the world’s limited supply of [DRAM] sitting in their own computer”.
That thing that happened to that UHC CEO probably should start happening to more CEOs like Sam. Saying something like what he said should be beyond “mask-off” for anyone that has been in any way a supporter of his and OpenAI. Also fuck Jensen Huang, Samsung, Micron, SK-Hynix, and any of the other hardware companies that allowed global supplies to be made as expensive as having a car suddenly need hundreds/thousands of dollar work done.
I work on peoples’ PCs and telling them that their drive or RAM has failed, and explain so many times the reason those parts cost 1/3 or more of what their entire PC cost them originally. And have to try saving any RAM I can from recycled PCs (never storage because super obvious data privacy stuff) so I can maybe help out (give to) folks that for sure aren’t in a place money-wise to afford replacing it or getting a new PC. Mostly 4GB sticks here and there for DDR4 (DDR5 is still too new), and run diags to make sure they are good. But going to get harder and harder to do it if companies that will take the PCs to be handed-off to recycling start locking up those PCs to prevent helping folks out that just need their PC to last a little bit longer until they can upgrade. If I happen to be the one taking their PC to put in our recycle bin. I try to ask permission from people that are already getting a new PC or the reason for recycle is due to actual physical damage or some major failure of the motherboard. And even just ask them if they want to have the RAM out of their previous PC for later (if it is usable for whatever they get).
Raspberry pi also started including DRM in their (non-free) firmware that restricts RAM upgrades. If you upgrade the RAM the firmware will either refuse to use the additional RAM or simply refuse to boot at all.
I think the current prices warrant switching to Chinese alternatives with worse software support.
At this point, just get a refurbished mini pc.
Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB RAM rises by $80
$40 price hike hits the Raspberry Pi 5 Compute Module (CM5) with 16 GB RAM.
You can tell you who Ebon wants to sell to and it’s not tinkerers and students any more. Don’t buy Raspi as an individual, you’re subsidising big business.
The Raspberry Pi was a $35 computer when it came out.
Who the fuck would pay $300 for one?
And that Pi had 512MB of memory, initially even only 256MB. The 1GB Raspi 4 can be bought today for $35-$40. You can still get a Pi that is better in every way than the first one and pay practically the same.
The Pi Zero was $5. It was also literally included on the cover of an official Raspberry Pi magazine. I kinda wish I had gotten one.
Remember when a raspberry pi was meant to be a cheap computer for hobby projects? I think I paid $20 or $30 for my 2B at the height of its popularity.
I paid 75€ for a Pi 5 8GB and thought that was ridiculous. Now they’re 2.5x more expensive. 2026 can get fucked right in the arse.
These weren’t worth it at the $120 price point, let alone now. I’m going to be recycling older SFF PCs I guess, at the penalty of higher noise and TDP.
Old laptops are way better than R pi’s at this point. Saves e-waste too.
Yes, except no laptop is going to consume as little W as Pi Zero…
I bought a Pi 5 for a project recently, and it just isn’t worth it anymore.
The price wasn’t even the part that razzed me the most, it was how utterly shit the Bluetooth signal was compounded with the fact they don’t even offer a simple u.fl jack to add a better antenna. The lines are there, you can actually scrape some solder mask and mod one in, but it looks like a pain.
Pi was made popular by “cheap price, decent enough product”. You get good value, and accept its quirks. But now when you can spend a bit more and get a “better” product, the usecases for Pi aren’t really there in my opinion.
I do expect bluetooth connectivity more than 2 feet away though, even if it were half the price.
Aren’t they a publicly traded company now? Gotta keep the shareholders happy…
