Raspberry Pi Increases Prices of 2GB Pi 4 and Pi 5 Models as Memory Crisis Gets Worse

Raspberry Pi has increased the prices of its 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 models again, with the company blaming a steep and continuing increase in memory costs. Effective starting today, the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now costs $67.50, while the 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 costs $77.50. Both models’ price have been hiked by $12.50.

Raspberry Pi says memory costs have become unsustainable

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said the company was able to protect the prices of its 1GB and 2GB models during its previous round of hikes in April, while raising prices on higher-memory variants. That is no longer sustainable, according to Raspberry Pi. The company says memory costs have risen very sharply over the past two years and continue to increase, forcing another adjustment.

This isn’t the first memory-driven price increase for Raspberry Pi this year. In February, Raspberry Pi raised prices on models with 2GB or more of memory by between $10 and $60, depending on the memory capacity.

The company then introduced a 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 for $83.75 in April as memory prices continued climbing. At the time, Raspberry Pi said the price of the LPDDR4 DRAM used by the Pi 4 and Pi 5 had increased sevenfold over the previous year.

Not every Raspberry Pi model is getting more expensive

The latest increase is limited to the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5. Raspberry Pi says prices for the 1GB versions remain unchanged, as do the 2GB versions of the Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5.

Raspberry Pi is also warning customers to avoid paying for more memory than their projects actually require. The company suggests that older models such as the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3A+ and 3B+ could make sense for projects that do not require newer hardware.

The company says the current memory supply situation is challenging but expects the pressure to eventually ease. When memory prices fall, Raspberry Pi says it looks forward to reversing its price increases.