As many of you are aware, the price of memory continues to rise, with a seven-fold increase over the last year in the price of the LPDDR4 DRAM used on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. Providing low-cost general-purpose computing remains a non-negotiable priority for us at Raspberry Pi, so while we can’t avoid passing on a portion of these increased costs, we’re also doing engineering work to expand the range of memory-density options available to our customers: we want to make sure you don’t pay for more memory than you need.

Today we are implementing further price increases across parts of our product range, and are also introducing a new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4, priced at $83.75. Notwithstanding today’s date, our new computer is as real as the rest of our products, and you can order it now from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers around the world.

The products affected by today’s price rises are Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 variants with 4GB or more of memory; Raspberry Pi 500 and 500+; all variants of Compute Module 4, Compute Module 4S, and Compute Module 5; the Development Kit for Compute Module 5; and Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2.

Right-size your memory

As painful as these price rises are, there are some brighter spots in the picture. We’ve been able to hold the price of Raspberry Pi 400 with 4GB of memory at $60, and the 1GB and 2GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 at between $35 and $65. These are capable and versatile modern Raspberry Pi computers at affordable price points.

And, as we’ve said before, we don’t anticipate any price rises for our classic products, including Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero W and Zero 2 W; Raspberry Pi 1, 3, 3B+, and 3A+; and Compute Module 1 and 3+. These products use older LPDDR2 DRAM, of which we currently hold substantial inventory. Our commitment to long product manufacturing lifetimes means that these products are still in production, still supported by software updates, and still used by customers all over the world.

In this environment, it’s well worth right-sizing both your memory and your overall compute, rather than going for something with more headroom than your application actually needs. Consider whether these models, or lower-density variants of newer models, will get the job done.

A challenging but temporary situation

We’ve said a number of times now that memory prices won’t remain at their current very high level indefinitely; the circumstances in which we find ourselves are challenging, but in the future they will abate. When they do, we will reverse our price increases, and until they do, we will continue to work hard to limit their impact in every way we can.