Raspberry Pi raised the price of its 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 boards on October 1, ending a hold that had outlasted the company's April round of increases.
Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi puts the new prices at $67.50 for the 2GB Pi 4 and $77.50 for the 2GB Pi 5, each up $12.50. The Pi 4 takes the bigger proportional hit, about 23 percent against about 19 percent for the Pi 5. The 1GB versions of both boards keep their old prices, as do the 2GB Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5.
The stated cause is memory. Upton says it has grown far more expensive over two years with no sign of leveling off, so Raspberry Pi has been repricing many products, as other companies have. In April it raised the higher-capacity variants but left the smaller tiers alone. Holding them there, he says, has become unsustainable.
The company's advice to buyers is to match the board to the job. It suggests that older models such as the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3A+ or 3B+ may be enough for some projects, and it offers business customers help trimming how much memory an application needs. For a company that sells the newer boards, pointing people to older ones is a telling concession about how heavily memory now weighs on a price.
Raspberry Pi also directs customers to its Approved Resellers, which it says follow its published maximum prices and number more than a hundred worldwide. It warns that some unauthorized sellers are inflating prices and, in some cases, shipping misrepresented products.
Raspberry Pi gives no end date for the new prices. It expects memory prices to subside eventually and says it looks forward to reversing its own increases when they do.
