Not Even The Raspberry Pi Is Safe From The RAM Crisis

There are countless creative ways you can put a Raspberry Pi to good use. They may not be the most powerful pieces of hardware, but for anyone passionate about building DIY projects, these small, single-board computers are extremely functional. For years, they've been popular among tech hobbyists, DIY enthusiasts, and educators for their versatility and affordability. Raspberry Pi's company mission is to "put high-performance, low-cost, general-purpose computing platforms in the hands of enthusiasts and engineers all over the world." It's safe to say that the organization has succeeded in doing that, judging by the way so many people have embraced its microcontrollers. However, the ongoing memory crisis caused in part by the demands of AI data centers is making it difficult for the company to maintain its historically low costs, although it's doing what it can to curtail the shortage's impact on its product lines.

If you've been keeping tabs on RAMageddon, you've no doubt noticed how many companies have raised their product prices in response. Nintendo even discontinued its $499 Nintendo Switch 2 "Mario Kart World" bundle owing to RAM shortages. Sony also raised the price of its PS5 consoles for the second time within a year, and Samsung recently hiked the prices of its tablets, phones, and laptops by up to $300 in the U.S. The crisis has also affected Raspberry Pi, leading the company to announce several price hikes on its existing products to offset the increasing cost of memory. Evidently, no products are immune to the ill effects of RAM shortages on pricing — not even beloved Raspberry Pis.

The memory crisis that began mounting in late 2025 has forced Raspberry Pi to review the prices of various Pi models. As of April 2026, the cost of LPDDR4 DRAM, which is used in the Pi 4 and 5, is up sevenfold over the last year, according to a recent Raspberry Pi blog post. As expected, the models with greater memory density have been impacted the most. The 16GB Raspberry Pi 5, for example, was first launched at $120. However, following several price bumps, that same model now costs $305, well over double its original MSRP.

The 8GB Pi 5 was originally $80, then it jumped to $95 in December 2025 in one of the company's memory-related price bumps. A $30 increase to $125 followed soon after that in February. Most recently, the 8GB Pi 5 saw yet another price uptick of $50 at the start of April, making for a retail price of $175 at the time of writing. That same $50 increase has even been applied to the slightly older Raspberry Pi 4, with all memory variants costing more now than they did originally. The 8GB Pi 4 was originally $75, but its list price now sits at $165, only $10 shy of the 8GB Pi 5.

The only Raspberry Pi models that haven't seen price jumps are the 1GB variants of the Pi 4 and Pi 5, the Compute Module 1 and 3+, and the Pi 1, 3, 3A+, 3B+, Zero, Zero W, and Zero 2 W. The company doesn't anticipate having to raise prices on these classic models because they use older LPDDR2 DRAM — of which Raspberry Pi holds a plentiful stock. If you're in the market for a microcontroller, don't hesitate to buy one of those older devices; there are several ways you can repurpose an old Raspberry Pi to have many practical uses. Alternatively, you can also search for newer, pre-owned models on used marketplaces or scour the internet for deals from various retailers.

While Raspberry Pi's latest memory-related price hikes were announced as recently as April, the company had announced its first price increases on October 1, 2025. This came just a few months after the organization had reduced the prices of the 4GB and 8GB Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 by $5 and $10, respectively. This October jump effectively reversed the price cuts made on those same models that had just been implemented in May 2025. The company also slightly marked up the Raspberry Pi 500 and the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for Compute Module 5 by $10 and $5, respectively.

The second price hike was announced on December 1, 2025, just two months after the first one was put in force. Fortunately, it only affected some models of the Pi 4 and Pi 5. So far in 2026, however, the company has increased costs twice. The first markup was effective on February 2, affecting all Pi 4, 5, Compute Module 4, and 5 models with at least 2GB of memory. Prices went up by as much as $60, depending on the included RAM.

The Raspberry Pi 500 and 500+ have also been affected. The most recent round of hikes, announced on April 1, have brought about Raspberry Pi's highest RAM-related price increases to date. The 16GB Pi 5's price rose by $100, while the Pi 500+ kit saw a significant $150 hike. A variety of other products were affects in this most recent price hike, including the Pi 4 and 5 models with 4GB of memory or greater, the Pi 500 and 500+ models, and all Compute Module 4, 4S, and 5 models.