Let them eat Pi: RAM shortage bumps Raspberry prices as much as $60

Second price increase in just two months

That slice of Pi is getting much more expensive. Everyone’s favorite single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi, is jumping up in price again, with increases ranging from $10 to $60, depending on how much memory your board has.

After boosting prices in December due to rising memory costs, Raspberry Pi has moved to do so again as LPDDR4 memory prices continue to climb, driven by competition for manufacturing capacity from the AI infrastructure roll-out. The increases apply to most hardware built on its Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 platforms, including the CM4 and CM5 compute modules and the Raspberry Pi 500 and Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PCs.

Any product with 2 GB of RAM will see a $10 price increase. Models with 4 GB will go up by $15, those with 8 GB will rise by $30, and top-of-the-line 16 GB units will jump by $60.

So, the Raspberry Pi 5 (2 GB) will now carry a list price of $65, the Pi 5 (4 GB) will be priced at $85, the Pi 5 (8 GB) will go for $125, and the Pi 5 (16 GB) will now be $205. The Raspberry Pi 500+, which we reviewed back in September, jumps to $260. The Pi 500 will go for $130.

In the Pi 4 line, the 2 GB capacity goes to $55 while the 4 GB model hits the $75 mark. The top-of-the-line 8 GB capacity will now be $115.

Fortunately, the base-model 1 GB configurations of the Pi 4 and Pi 5 will remain at $35 and $45 respectively. Older models such as the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 3 will also maintain their current prices. The Raspberry Pi 400 and its 4 GB of RAM stay at $60.

For anyone watching the tech marketplace, it's no surprise the Raspberry Pi outfit has had to raise prices. In January, analysts at TrendForce predicted DRAM contract prices could rise by as much as 60 percent this quarter. Now, the firm says to expect a 90 to 95 percent increase instead.

The RAM shortage is caused by increased datacenter demand, which has encouraged memory makers to focus more on selling pricey HBM (high-bandwidth memory) to hyperscalers. It has also taken some of the regular DRAM out of the market as rack systems require it as well. Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72, for example, requires 54 TB of LPDDR5X memory. ®