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Production and supply-chain update

As you will have noticed, it can be hard to buy a Raspberry Pi unit from stock at the moment. Several factors are contributing to this, and we thought it would be helpful to provide an update on what’s been happening since we last wrote about this in October.

Supply

Over the last six months we’ve been working hard to get more Raspberry Pi products built and shipped to customers. Despite a variety of supply-chain challenges, we’ve consistently been able to build around half a million of our single-board computers and Compute Module products each month. As we said in October, the 28nm BCM2711 part used on Raspberry Pi 4 and Compute Module 4 has been more readily available than the 40nm parts used on our older products.

We have a strong pipeline of components, and will continue to build units at at least this rate over the coming months.

Demand

As we’ve said before, the current situation is as much a demand shock as a supply shock: demand for Raspberry Pi products increased sharply from the start of 2021 onwards, and supply constraints have prevented us from flexing up to meet this demand, with the result that we now have significant order backlogs for almost all products. In turn, our many resellers have their own backlogs, which they fulfil when they receive stock from us.

Raspberry Pi being made in our factory in Wales

These backlogs absorb Raspberry Pi units as fast as (or faster than!) we can produce them, with the result that little of our production volume ends up being immediately available on reseller websites. Where units do appear, bots often attempt to scalp stock which is then resold at higher prices elsewhere. Many Approved Resellers have implemented single-unit limits to combat this, with Adafruit and others going further and enforcing two-factor authentication – we’re encouraging other Approved Resellers to consider this route.

We spend a lot of time on backlog management. We have to balance volume demand from commercial and industrial customers with the demand we see from individuals. Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake. There is currently enough supply to meet the needs of those customers. (Read to the end if you’re in this position and are struggling.) Unfortunately this comes at the cost of constrained supply for individual customer, who might be looking to buy a small number for home projects or for prototyping.

Advice

So, what should you do if you need to buy a Raspberry Pi in 2022?

Always buy from an Approved Reseller

We can’t emphasise this enough! Our Approved Resellers get preferential access to supplies of Raspberry Pi products. They’re also held to a single price: those people you see complaining on social media that they’ve seen Raspberry Pis on sale for vastly inflated amounts of money aren’t buying from Approved Resellers, who will all sell you a Raspberry Pi product for the price we state on our products pages plus your local taxes and shipping where appropriate.

If you’re a consumer, click on the “Buy Now” on a Raspberry Pi product page to find an Approved Reseller in your region. Some Approved Resellers take pre-orders, and should be able to give you a good indication of how long it will take to fulfil an order; others don’t, in which case you may want to use tools such as rpilocator to keep an eye on which resellers have recently received stock.

Consider Raspberry Pi 400, or Raspberry Pi Pico

These products are generally in better stock positions.

We set aside a certain amount of BCM2711 silicon supply for Raspberry Pi 400, which plays an important role in our mission to provide general-purpose PC computing at an affordable price. Many of our Approved Resellers have this product in stock today.

While they are not full-fledged PCs like other Raspberry Pi products, Raspberry Pi Pico, and the many third-party boards based on our RP2040 microcontroller, can be used for many of the same embedded applications. We have plenty of stock of Pico, and of RP2040.

Get in touch!

If you require volume supply of Raspberry Pi products for an industrial or commercial application, you can contact us at [email protected]. There remain levers we can pull, and we’ll do our best to support you.

196 comments

While it is understandable that the pi foundations needs to support companies which make products with the various Pi’s – as a consumer – I have not even seen stock (despite setting up stock notify etc) let alone been able to buy a CM4 or Pi4 in the last 6 months. Seems the consumer – the original primary mission for the pi – have been left with nothing to buy for a long time now.

Many of the restocks are so small that vendors aren’t sending out restock notifications. Try rpilocator.com or rpilocator on Twitter.
Set up twitter notifications. Adafruit is your best bet. Be sure to set up 2 factor authentication, and get all your shipping/payment figured out before hand. In the last couple weeks, they’ve had multiple restocks of various pi4 memory sizes that have lasted about 10-15 min in stock. Enough time for me to grab one, and I had to fumble through 2 factor authentication. Hope this helps.

Thanks, but Adafruit is a US company and not selling direct in the UK where the Pi’s are made. Indeed more seem to go other countries than the UK itself gets.

I can’t recommend rpilocator.com enough: they certainly do a good job of spotting when new stock arrives at (e.g.) The Pi Hut and Pimoroni, which is does on a fairly regular basis.

Nice hint!!
Just grabbed a 1GB Pi4 with peripherals!

It’s unfair when you are producing “half a million” raspberry pi, and we have to buy them from unofficial sellers on Amazon. Even for 3x price! Meanwhile, your official sellers are selling these boards with unnecessary equipment for what? Making much more cache from students! (https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-8gb.html?cid=cad&src=raspberrypi)
And obviously, no one cares about students anymore.
Unfortunately, raspberry pi lost its way.

Access to Raspberry PI’s over here in the states for legitimate hobbyists and educators has become impossible. I’m not able to obtain any Raspberry PI Zero W 2 computers at the intended prices in order to provide them for K-12 students in this Raspberry PI programming group I’m trying to start. I certainly don’t want to pay 60$ per unit to someone who has gone into business for himself buying the boards through bot software and reselling them on EBAY. This has been brought to EBAY’s attention, and they appear to care less, even though it is a violation of their posted policies. I have no intention of buying and reselling the boards. Is there anything that can be done? I live in rural / disadvantaged SW Virginia. The whole intent of the Raspberry PI Foundation was to provide opportunity to young students to expand their STEM awareness. [mod lightly edited]

Hi Eben
We are working with a company on the Milton Science Park to manufacture a smart meter using a Pi and a 7″ touch screen. the device will be used in social housing projects so that individuals can monitor and pay for there energy. the company in question is cThings Ltd https://cthings.io/ to support there business we ideally need 500 off Pi3-1G or Pi4-2G with 500 off 7″ screens in 12 weeks time when the mould we are making is available to make the device housing. the demand will increase to 3-4K/year units over the next 2 years. Is there any way we can purchase larger volumes we will and do require without going through a reseller.
Best Regards
Chris Mitchell
Cap Air Systems Ltd

Hi Chris – could you please email the address at the bottom of this post?

@Thomas, the Raspberry Pi foundation are not involved in the sale of Pi hardware to companies.

Well what ever legal body sells all the pi’s – the prioritisation of the sales to other companies making products rather than selling to end users is leaving little to nothing for the end consumer. It shows where the priorities now are for Ebon and his team. Low stock due to the supply issues across the world is unfortunate but understandable but that is not what is/was happening and perhaps there should be some rebalance of supply otherwise the hobby sector will just dry up.

We do have a responsibility to companies which have built their products on our platform. What we’re saying here is that we’ve had to prioritise these people (and remember, companies are run by, and employ, people) over *ex-stock* availability to consumers for a period of time.

This statement seems to run contrary to the mission statement. Prioritizing selected commercial entities prevents “democratising”, your stated goal, harming almost every entity listed below.

Who are Raspberry Pi

Democratising technology – providing access to tools – has been our motivation since the Raspberry Pi project began. By driving down the cost of general-purpose computing to below $5, we’ve opened up the ability for anybody to use computers in projects that used to require prohibitive amounts of capital. Today, with barriers to entry being removed, we see Raspberry Pi computers being used everywhere from interactive museum exhibits and schools to national postal sorting offices and government call centres. Kitchen table businesses all over the world have been able to scale and find success in a way that just wasn’t possible in a world where integrating technology meant spending large sums on laptops and PCs.

Hi Eben,
I think the issue (frustration as you can see) is how long this has gone on for with no end insight – 2023 is a long way away!
Will keep an eye on rpilocator for pihut/pimoroni but please carry on doing your best to resolve this.

I beg to differ.
You are not responsible for a 3rd-party corporation’s decision-making. Full stop.

Thank you for this continued commitment to companies building with Pi. It’s clear this whole awesome project wouldn’t work without the interest from both sides of the coin.

Eben, I would like to thank you for prioritizing businesses, who are providing employment and livings for a great many people, over those who are buying Pis for trivial personal projects. It concerns me greatly that so many here care more about their own personal convenience than the well being of others. You, sir, are a wise and ethical person in this decision, and you deserve respect and recognition for your honorable decision to set aside the goals of the Foundation, when they would do more harm than good in these difficult times. I find it concerning that so many would put petty concerns of personal convenience above the well being of others, but I’m glad to see that people in positions of power are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good.

I would love to get myself another Pi4, with significantly more memory than the one I currently have, but if it would risk harming someone else’s livelihood, I will gladly wait. Not only do I support your decision, I also have decided not to buy the Pi I would like at this time, in hopes that it will reduce the pressure to give certain selfish individuals convenience at the cost of someone else’s livelihood.

I’ll make due with the handful of RP2040 devices I recently bought. I love that chip, and I think the programmable state machine on it was ingenious. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done and are doing in this field! Hopefully someday my children, who are currently learning to program the QT Py 2040 (the youngest I am currently teaching is 8 years old), will be as thankful to you and everyone else at the Foundation as I am.

It sounds like you need to split your business into commercial and consumer sectors and differentiate the product accordingly so that one doesn’t affect the other.

I completely agree with the points relating to small businesses that have built products around Raspberry Pi should have access to enough compute to keep the lights on. I think there is a lot of balancing happening here. I really hope this situation calms down and settles soon!

I have emailed [email protected] with my most urgent needs; fingers crossed!

I am a sole proprieter. I have been in buisness 2 years. I make amatuer radio hotspots. I am disabled so I came up with this as I cannot work regular jobs. I use around 100 pi’s every 3 months but now I cannot even get 1. Please Help. My start up buisness I have worked so hard for is in die or straits. Robert

Hi Robert. If you put this in an email to [email protected], my colleagues will do their best to help.

so when wlll i be able to buy one so that i have a computer to use, this is horrible, i cant just go and buy another device i dont have the money please Help

Couldn’t agree more. Stress the importance of only buying genuine Pis. Oh by the way we aren’t selling to you right now.

I had the same experience until a youtube video pointed me to rpilocator.com – that site constantly gets updates from stores and displays it with an accuracy of 1 minute. And i was able to by a pi4 / 4gb model. Now I need more and a zero 2w . Unfortunately most shops limit the number you can buy

The prioritisation of Pi’s to commercial customers seems to be at odds with the original aim of helping youngsters program.

Raspberry Pi 400, currently in stock with many of our approved resellers, is a great tool for this; many resellers also offer low-cost GPIO adapters to make it easy to use 400 for physical computing projects too. Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi Foundation continues to offer a wide range of free resources and clubs to help children and young people learn, whether on our own platform or on other hardware to which they have access.

Indeed the Pi 400 is an excellent machine – but its use is really as a desktop machine. For makers – form factor matters and the Pi 400 is often not right for that.
I suppose the frustration exhibited in many posts here on both sides of the fence is because of the success of the pi – i really have looked at alternatives but its in a league of its own with support, software addons etc. I guess its a victim of its own success!!
While those on the business side do dismiss the hobbyist use of the pi’s – the hobbyist do support a lot of small businesses too who sell them the Pi’s by buying addons etc to go with it – see Pimoroni and PiHut have grown over the years due to this (and provide excellent service too!). But if you cant buy the pi’s your not buying the cases, keyboards, psu, mouse, hats etc to go with it from them.
I shall sigh(!) and appreciate (frustration aside) that your doing your best and be patient before starting that next project!

Thanks Thomas – we appreciate the kind words. And you’re right, no decision here is without consequences we’d rather avoid – as Eben has said, hard choices, and we will be glad when we no longer have to make them.

I think a point that’s getting a little glossed over is the part of the mission about keeping costs down for us hobbyists. A lot of that is likely done by those corporate sales. I imagine it’s a balance discussion that happens every now and then in the halls of the Rpi kingdom. I too have been unable to find one for a while and will probably just get on Ada’s backlog list, but it’s the way of the world these days. I also haven’t been able to find my favorite frozen chicken for months but I haven’t lambasted Tyson, yet. I just continue prototyping with different brands of chicken. Wait, what?…

I was thinking along these lines too. If Pi is going to continue to develop new products and keep the cost down then the industrial volume sales are important. I feel that the right strategic decision has been made and ultimately it will support the tinkerers and individual learners over the long term.

Perfect response tone, love it. You would have to be living under a rock to not know there is a global supply chain issue. Also, good luck in starting an IC fab with a starting price of $1B and $3-4B USD not uncommon. Now if you really want to “democratize” this, well that would be something wouldn’t it. The complaining is like balling over gravity, get over it.

Rpi 400 is useless for many use-cases and is not using all the capabilities of BCM2711, like what Rapsberry 4b or cm4 does.
Also, it is just utterly stupid to have a keybord and so on if I for example want to build a small TV-server with tv-hat to serve the whole house.

May be you can buy a Raspberry Pi 400, take the board out of the keyboard, and you can have a long ‘Raspberry Pi 4B’

In stock where? You should verify what you post prior to just saying “The Raspberry PI 4 boards are in stock at many of our authorized resellers.” That is not the case.

I’m referring above to Raspberry Pi 400, which has better availability. If you click the Buy Now button on the page for this product you can choose your region and see which resellers carry it; the first four US resellers I tried all have it in stock at the moment.

Thank you for this important and reassuring information.

“Our Approved Resellers get preferential access to supplies of Raspberry Pi products”
Ironically, the only success I have had in buying CM4’s has been through a non-approved reseller!

This is contributing to the scalping. If people were not willing to pay above retail, the scalpers wouldn’t be hogging all the Pis.

What is the MOQ for ordering directly from [email protected]?

Your best bet is to drop us a line at that address and set out your situation and needs. We understand that businesses may need product at every stage from prototyping onwards and you certainly don’t need to be a megacorp to get in touch. I can’t make any promises, but I’d encourage you to go ahead and get in touch and we will provide what help we can.

Thank you for an update! I must admit, the wait has been frustrating, but my RPi use (at the moment) is limited to being a hobbyist. I work as a controls/automation tech and our lead time on hardware has been a struggle as well, so I completely understand prioritizing your commercial and industrial customers.
In the grand scheme of things, I am still amazed at what I get for the price and feature set of a Raspberry Pi. I really appreciate that you have approved resellers that honor your pricing. I have and will only buy my RPi products from your approved resellers, not because your products aren’t worth the higher prices, but because I want to support RPi and sellers like Adafruit who give us all so much value beyond just fulfilling orders.

Thank you. This is painful experience for us, and we (and I’m sure our Approved Resellers) appreciate your support.

Thank you for the update

Thanks for this update.

Thanks for the update… !!!

I’m getting mine shipped today after waiting almost 1 1/2 months. CanaKit just shipped back orders this week.

Good news! This illustrates that getting in the queue at an Approved Reseller is one of two good ways (the other being to watch rpilocator.com like a hawk) for consumers to get their hands on a unit in the shortest possible time.

I did get RPi 400 from Adafruit. The process was seamless. I didn’t have to do 2 factor auth, if I remember correctly. There was extra information submitted than usual, though. Currently waiting for 8 GB model of either CM4 or RPi4 for 64 bit OS heavy duty computing applications.

I’m not sure if Micro Center (US) is an approved reseller, but I was able to get a 4B/2GB a couple weeks ago and a zero 2 before that. They can’t be reserved or shipped so you have to watch their store listing and be ready to move when they show up. My local store showed 8 yesterday and later they had none. (2GB models) They sell them at suggested retail price.

I think that leaving the end userbout in the cold is counter intuitive to one of the cmetral tenets: hobbyists , coders, students. I use the RASPI4 for teaching under privileged kids basic IT skills. We rely on donations /donors who buy for us. None of the donors can find any stock for us.
Sunny, Johannesburg South Africa

Perhaps worth an email to [email protected]?

Thanks for the update. Any comments on when supplies might be improving?

I’ve made a fool of myself in the past attempting to forecast the end of this one. Mike Buffham, our chief commercial officer, has been working in the electronics industry for the best part of forty years, and says this is the worst he’s ever seen. It may well be that this is the worst supply-chain dislocation ever, all the way back to the invention of the transistor!
My hunch, for what it’s worth: we’re already seeing some softening here and there, and I expect a substantial return to normality in 2023.

Unfortunately there seems to be a supply-shortage of crystal balls too!

Indeed!

While I understand that businesses that use rpi’s have staff, overheads etc. It feels very much like the rpi foundation is losing touch with its aim to put cheap computers into the hands of children. The global supply chain is going to continue to have problems for the next year or two. How many children are going to miss out in this time if you continue to prioritize commercial customers?

Hopefully very few, if they follow the suggestions in the blog post describing how consumers can get their hands on Raspberry Pi hardware in the current environment.

Eben, hopefully yes but sadly no if you go to your two biggest ARs in the UK. Both Farnell and RS Components are quoting dates at the end of 2022 into 2023 (I had ordered one from each of them). Good that some of the smaller ARs are rationing to 1 per order and finding ways to beat the scalpers but as one who has been with you since the beginning, don’t leave the hobbyists / schools / clubs out in the cold for too long, diversion to other hardware will only increase if your product can’t be obtained.

Go to some of the smaller ARs! The issue you’re seeing there is that the restock dates are algorithmically set at both of those companies and (happily) don’t reflect reality – I do wish they’d get a human in the loop, but it’s understandable when you consider how many products they both sell.

I’m teaching my kids between 8 and 12 years old using QT Py 2040 boards from Adafruit. Kids will only miss out if educators and parents keep insisting on using hardware that isn’t currently available in sufficient volume. Personally, I’m finding it far easier teaching my kids using the RP2040 chip, where they don’t have to learn a huge amount about a full desktop OS to do any serious program. (I did try the Pi4 with one of them, but he struggled with all of the OS stuff. Once he has the coding stuff down, the OS stuff will be much easier.) The truth is, the Pi Foundation has many products that are well suited to teaching kids, and resellers have used those to create even easier ones. Last week I taught four of my kids to read a temperature/humidity sensor with QT Py 2040, using a STEMMA QT device that eliminates the need for soldering components or breakout boards (and, being in the U.S., I taught them to convert the Celsius readings of the device into Fahrenheit). We will have to do a little bit of soldering for the neopixel arrays for most of their projects (temperature/humidity mood “amulet”, analog LED watch, and LED compass), but everything else is plug and play, with CircuitPython on a QT Py 2040 to control everything. Not only is it easier than a Pi, it’s more impressive and far more fun for them! Oh right, and it’s cheaper than learning on a Pi too (except for the one who decided to do robotics stuff, that required an additional 12v power supply, servos, steppers, and drivers; that’s going to take some soldering too, but I like soldering, so no big deal).

I think the policy of taking care of commercial customers first is actually what is rerouting supplies to the scalpers… Think about it… “Oh, I need 10,000 units to support my business operations”….. Yeah…my “business” is buying raspberry Pi’s at wholesale and reselling them at 400% markup. I think you actually should be focusing on individual customers….

While it’s true that it’s tricky to do a perfect job of keeping stock out of the hands of scalpers, both we and our approved resellers are having a lot of individual conversations with commercial customers about the detail of their needs, so we do have a fair bit of visibility of where bulk orders are ending up. I am obviously not the person who is having these conversations – that’s not my role – but I do know both my colleagues who are and a number of our resellers. They know what’s what and I would be astonished if “Please sell me 10K units for… ah… my secret new product” is a thing that can be successful at the moment.

Just getting into the pi thing and trying to find one is near impossible. I can’t believe that you put businesses first on the list before children and the less well off!!! Shame on you

I am really sorry to hear that the situation is making it hard for you to pursue your interest, and this whole thing doesn’t make us feel happy – it isn’t comfortable at all to see would-be Raspberry Pi users having trouble getting their hands on a board. As Eben has said, these are hard choices to make: we’re giving businesses the consideration that we are because there are people’s jobs and livelihoods to consider here. It’s very well worth checking out rpilocator.com – you’ll find that the picture changes quite rapidly, so don’t be too disheartened if you don’t see the board you’re looking for in your region right away – and, as we’ve mentioned, we have set aside parts for Raspberry Pi 400, which is a great product for low-cost general purpose computing and for learning, and is in stock with many of our resellers at the moment.

I’m sorry but I don’t feel that a charity who’s aim is to produce a cheap computers to enable children to learn to code, should be putting profit making businesses before their charity’s intended customers. Eben made it clear from the beginning that the foundations sole purpose was to enable children to have access to cheap computers so that they could learn to code, and go on to fill the void in numbers of those who were applying for computer science degrees at university level. By prioritizing profit making businesses, the foundation is doing exactly the opposite to their aim.

Maybe you never considered that without those profit making businesses, it won’t matter if children learn to code, because there won’t be anyone to hire them to use those skills. This isn’t a game for children to have fun. The Raspberry Pi is a tool for children to learn skills they can use as adults. If you put education before profit, those skill will never be useful, and the whole thing falls apart. By putting businesses first, the Pi Foundation is making the education valuable in the first place. If they deprive businesses every time there’s a shortage, the value of those skills becomes less reliable and businesses won’t use them anymore. We shouldn’t be wasting resources teaching kids skills that aren’t useful. This is far more complicated than you realize. The kids can wait. The businesses can’t. And if the businesses fail, there won’t be any value in teaching the kids in the first place. The education is important for the economy. Without the economy, the education loses its value. This is real life, not a game for kids to play at recess. Without the businesses, there is no point in any of it.

@Rybec, teaching students is neither trivial nor petty.

I’m glad you find your children can do as well with a CMU as with an SBC, but in the after-school programs I have taught to middle schoolers in the past, that simply would not have worked, even if I did have the time to completely rewrite the the lesson plans.

I’m afraid your response strikes me as far too cavalier. We don’t encourage people’s greater generosity by being insensitive to their needs, especially when they are carrying on difficult and vital work such as teaching.

– Gary

I must say I don’t agree that the RPi Foundation is responsible for prioritizing the needs of for-profit commercial users ahead of the users for which the RPi was intended. Has the foundation’s mission really changed that much? Commercial businesses profit because they take risks, and if a company decides to create or migrate its business needs to the RPi platform they must accept some risk if their profit isn’t part of the foundation’s mission. It just seems like selling to schools, hobbyists, tinkerers, and developers is both more in line with the foundation’s stated goals and probably easier to accomplish first before accommodating the needs of businesses. Why not prioritize keeping approved resellers shelves stocked, and let the existing commercial users continue to rely on their already deployed earlier RPi generations until more new stock is available. I mean, if their profits are dependent upon RPis, then they must already have them deployed, right? So they can wait a little longer. And if they haven’t already deployed RPis, perhaps asking them to go to the back of the line and wait to make their businesses dependent on RPi availability until manufacturing catches up with demand would better support the foundation’s objectives.

I could not agree more.

Concerned about buisnesses really? I am a sole proprietor visit my URL Above. I sell 1 product amatuer radio hotspots. I have had useless responses to all my inquiries. I am in die or straights. I am disabled so I came up with this home buisness and worked very hard and it became successsfull. Now it looks like I will have to shut down. Robert

I totally agree with your statements here

A number of your approved vendors allow you to place an order for delivery when stocks become available. I wonder how many people have placed orders with several firms to cover as many bases as possible. Placing, say, three orders instead of one and waiting to see who delivers first. This will have created an artificially high number of orders and distorted the figures.

Anecdotal, but it looks like a lot of those we’ve been speaking to have done exactly that.

This is exactly what makes emerging from this sort of situation an “exciting” time for a CEO :)

I created rpilocator.com out of the same frustration that everyone commenting here has. I’m a hobbyist too and I was looking for a Pi zero 2 and a couple of CM4’s. I realized that there are Pi computers available in the market (through authorized resellers) all the time, but I was not going to stumble into a Pi in stock without some sort of notification system. I’ve helped countless people find the Pi they want (including myself) all over the world. Agree with Eben, if you can wait, just pre-order one from stores that accept pre-orders. If not, just get one of my notification system setup and you’ll probably find the Pi you want sooner than you expect.

Thanks Andre. It’s been a useful tool for us as well: it’s good to be able to keep an eye on pricing at a glance!

Thanks for creating the tool; I know some people might blame it for making things worse… but from the many people I’ve heard from who were finally able to buy a Pi after months of coming up short, I think it’s a great service during this annoying period of scalpers and bots taking over. Hopefully more retailers will put in place safeguards and queues like Adafruit (I noticed others now have at least a limit of 1 per day now).

Thanks Jeff for alerting me to RPiLocator and Andre for creating it! I was able to get a Pi4 a month or so ago as a direct result.

Now Jeff has by far tested CM4s WOTH other maker boards. Tested and integrated them in the most genius manner. He has taken the PI 4way beyond any expectations. His dedication on his YouTube channel is nothing short of amazing. The two are synonymous. However, it has created many new projects the wife or massive extended family “needs” as solutions. Until I get mine, I gladly watch Jeff pushing boundaries!
Thanks Jeff most humbly!

Thank you for all of your hard work! I love the Raspberry Pi, and am excited for all of the new minds getting into tech because of it! It strikes a wonderful balance between ease of use and hackability.

RPI lesson after 1 month of utilizing rpis: PCs are great!
RPI lesson after 12 months of utilizing rpis:
Broadcom su**s!
RPI lesson 3 after 3 years of utilizing rpis:
Sell it ASAP and buy real desktop class hw, the cost the same, they are far more capable, and they also have mesa nowdays..

Prioritizing commercial and industrial customers isn’t right in my book. It’s supposed to be for people to learn. Not make money. I’ve lost faith in raspberry pi foundation over this.

I’ll recap a couple of the things Eben says in the second half of this blog post, which should be very effective at helping people who want Raspberry Pi products to learn with to get hold of them. Raspberry Pi 400, in stock with many resellers, is an excellent computer for learning, and you can avail yourself of a low-cost adapter that lets you use the GPIO easily too so you need not miss out on the electronics side; but if you need a different Raspberry Pi product, keep an eye on rpilocator.com and you’re likely to find it in stock with a reseller in your region before too long. And of course the Raspberry Pi Foundation provides all kinds of free resources for learners whether using our own platforms or other hardware, including online resources for learning out of school; online and in-person events; classroom resources; and support for thousands of coding clubs in countries all around the world. Supporting business customers isn’t about making life nice and comfortable for Scrooge McDuck types in boardrooms – people’s livelihoods are important, and many customers are smaller businesses, possibly not what everyone imagines when they think of the phrase “commercial customers”.

“Before too long” ….. you clearly have not checked for the products or waited to try to get a single compute module or RPI4 that you would like to get. I have waited over 6 months checking for an RPI4 8 gb model and have had 0 luck. I am on every single notification available, and need an 8gb for back testing and running trading bots that make me, an individual consumer, extra income. This company has really poor excuses, and they dont fall in line with the original values of the “foundation” I will n longer be supporting this company after seeing this post. You are literally favoring “businesses” that create kits or things like helium miners, where they have an endless stock at prices that are 3x minimum of what the MSRP of a PI is. Its sad to see a company I used to like go so far downhill….

“I am on every single notification available, and need an 8gb for back testing and running trading bots that make me, an individual consumer, extra income.”

Let me get this straight. You are berating us for prioritising commercial customers over our educational mission, and you then admit that the reason you are frustrated about not being able to get a Pi is because you want to run trading bots on it? So in other words, you are yourself a commercial customer who just wants to make money for yourself, with no interest in our educational mission either, aren’t you?

People in glass houses, etc.

Which approved resellers offer a queue? I don’t terribly mind waiting rather than spending time gambling on an in-stock moment.

We don’t maintain a list of these, but you probably won’t find it excessively time-consuming to identify some; I quite often find myself using the Buy Now button on one of our product pages to find resellers or check the stock situation for consumers in a particular country, and when I do, I generally find a mixture of resellers who do and don’t offer pre-orders when a product is awaiting re-supply.

I tried all the home authorized resellers and none of them currently offer preorders.

It is good to get an update on the situation however like many it is a great disappointment to see commercial entries given priority. Businesses everywhere are struggling with supply chain issues, why should they be prioritised? The foundations aim was to enable children and those less well off to learn essential computer skills. I too can’t help but feel this decision is going against that original ethos of the foundation.

We had no problem getting 10 Pi400s to set up a classroom in our new maker / learner space.

Incidentally, if you haven’t tried a Pi400 you are missing out – it’s a FABULOUS machine for $100 or so.

Thanks, GBB – this is great to hear!

The PI400 is a nice computer and I do have one. But sits mostly in my computer parts cabinet. Unfortunately, for my use, it doesn’t fit the form factor for sitting inside a little box running headless :) . That’s where the other PI’s come in. Luckily I have several PI-4s and PI-3s, Zeros, etc. to reuse and to work with…. but like potato chips, I would like to pick up another PI-4 at some point for another dedicated project. Every day I check adafruit, and out of stock on all of them…. But at least I am still ‘making’ so to speak. I can wait ….’impatiently’ that is :D .
—
Thanks for the update. Glad to see at least they are really still in production. To bad we have to live with ‘bots’ on the net. Sad.

Honestly, I think you’ve done a great job summarising the options available for non-commercial customers – particularly highlighting rpilocator, which has helped me keep my home ticking over!
I do understand the need to keep business supplied with what they need – people need jobs and many jobs can’t be sustained without similarly sustained revenue (or even having to re-do a year of R&D because the parts you need no longer exist).
And besides, keeping the Pi 400 as a prioritised product says a lot to me that you’re making the best of a bad bunch and really do want to keep this available for the newbies.

Keep it up! <3

Since I couldn’t get a rpi 4, waited forever, I ended up getting a UDOO which blows the doors off comparitvely.

Prioritizing commercial use does not necessarily solve commercial problems. I sell HATs and pHATs, however my customers are not able to buy Pis, which means they have no way to use my products. Please recognize that either choice will kill businesses, it is just a question of which businesses you choose to kill.

Surely you qualify as a business customer and can access stock to meet your requirements?

From what I understand, he’s selling HATs not PIs.
I think he’s making a fair point. There are a number of businesses who will see their customer base shrink for the very simple fact that they cannot get a Pi. So why bother getting a HAT or other accessories.
I do understand the choice to prioritize commercial customers *a little bit* but at the same time I must confess that it seems off with the stated goals of the foundation. Also, like mentioned above, it kind of targets a very specific set of commercial companies from what I gather. I also have to wonder how one classifies a commercial customer. While I do not directly have a registered commercial enterprise, I do use the Pi to support my work which I now cannot do sadly.

Just to echo the thoughts of others, explicitly prioritising businesses seems to be blind to the biggest drivers of this community. Why should businesses, those with ample compute alternatives (and a wallet to go with it) suffocate the consumer market and prevent kids from getting their hands on something affordable. I’m mostly disappointed to find this out to be honest. As an ongoing donor to the foundation, this isn’t the sort of move I set out to support. Cancelling further contributions

Raspberry Pi Foundation have no involvement in the Hardware, Raspberry Pi Trading are the commercial arm of the Charity and any profits are given to the Foundation to fund their goals and objectives. Therefore whilst helping “Commercial” is seen as a bad move it does provide a good revenue stream for the Foundation. Yes a tricky balancing act but it is one with no winners.

I’ve been trying for months and months to get my first pi. Just one single rpi 4. I’ve got notifications on for every approved seller and have been watching rpilocator like a hawk. If you happen to get an in stock notification, in the minute it takes to get to the site they’re gone. You say don’t feed the scalpers but somehow they’re the ones that always have them by the boatload while normal consumers can’t buy a single one. It’s at the point where the only way to actually get one is to buy one for triple price off ebay. Especially when you prioritize businesses over your average consumer. Trickling 5 pi’s here and there once in a blue moon isn’t helping anyone. There’s clearly a flaw in your method of prioritization because eBay has an unlimited amount of scalpers selling them. How are they able to get so many at a time? Pose as a business since they’re the ones who get priority. I was super excited to build my first project and learn the pi ecosystem, but after months of trying to get just one and coming up empty handed it’s takin the excitement and fun out of it and it’s time for me to give up or find some other alternative that’ll work. Sorry raspberry pi, you’ve made something that was supposed to be fun and exciting into the most annoying waste of time and I’m done chasing the non existent unicorn. Keep on supporting the big business and forgetting about your average consumer, it’s a great look for you!

Prioritising businesses feels like absolutely the wrong call, it really doesn’t feel like it aligns with the stated aims of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It’s leaving a nasty taste in the mouth for sure. I would suggest that it’s time for some soul-searching if educational users of all ages are locked out to facilitate the Korgs of this world to ship more product.
Also, a Pi 400 is not a suitable replacement for a proper compact SBC for many user cases. Constantly suggesting that is beginning to feel unpleasantly glib. Of course they’re more available, they’re a lot less useful to almost everyone- the additional size and weight kills a lot of possible use cases, commercial, private or educational.

I don’t need Pi400. I need CM4 and a couple Pi 4, 8gigs. I am so tried of looking, go by Microcenter every week. Only see that sign. “No Pi 4”. A year and half I’ve been driving, so much time and gas wasted. I was hoping that it would be this year. Well stop releasing new stuff for the pi, since we can buy a pi to use them.

Sorry I am made, because the things I want to do, I can’t, but business can. What makes you for the time I have searched and drove looking for you product.

Feel like I’m stepping into the lion’s den here slightly, but I for one would like to thank the RPI team for realising that there are lots of small businesses out there who will simply go bust and people will lose their jobs if they cannot buy Pi’s.

We have been able to order 300 Pi’s directly from RPI Trading, which is a couple of months supply for us. Until we were able to place that order, we were in a very bleak situation, with people’s livelihoods at risk.

Businesses have been encouraged to use RPI for commercial products. It would be a shame to turn on them now in their hour of need when they have done nothing but believe in the product.

Thank you RPI team, I overall I think your doing a pretty good job at balancing the situation (compared to say Google Coral…) 😊

Thanks. I do think that what you say here is important:

We have been able to order 300 Pi’s directly from RPI Trading, which is a couple of months supply for us.

I suspect that a lot of people read “business” to mean “colossal global enterprise” – in most cases it’s people like you, whose businesses are not huge, who employ a small number of people and who would suffer significant hardship if they weren’t able to get the supplies they need. It’s a different situation from that of hobbyists (and schools and other educators are doing just fine; we’re looking after them as well).

Thank you for the update, most organisations wouldn’t share such detailed and useful information. One thing the shortage has done has made me raid my box of old and ancient PIs – in many cases they’re perfectly well suited to new projects and I’ve used several in such a way including one installed at our local sailing club to monitor the weather.

How to strain fan loyalty and damage a decade of good will. Hobbyists are not disposable. Tone-deaf.

Have you considered that there are millions of Pi’s sitting in draws gathering dust, either free ones given to unmotivated shoolchildren or previous ‘obsolete’ versions owned IT geeks like myself. A recycle my Pi campaign could bring in some of those which could be plugged into your existing testing pipeline and reused.

First thing I want to point out, The Raspberry Pi foundation clearly has given us a complete answer. Especially if one is willing to read thoroughly and attempt to comprehend the situation from all angles. No offense intended. The next thing I wanted to point out is that there may be solutions that have been overlooked. Case in point, the board inside the Pi 400 is the same board as one of the regular Pi 4’s, right? So, what is there to stop people from simply buying a Pi 400 or set of Pi 400’s and opening the case(s) then using said board(s)? Aside from the extra 5 to 20 minutes time spent getting said case(s) open and pulling out the board(s)? Yes, this would add up to about 6.7 hours worth of time, if you are doing 20 Pi 400’s @ 20 minutes per Pi 400, but at least you’d have a set of Pi boards. Sure, I would not want to do this to 200 or 300 Raspberry Pi 400’s but what classroom needs that many Pi’s, a College classroom on robotics maybe? If, that is the case why not make disassembly a group project to cut down on Instructor workload? Now setting those points aside there ought to be stronger Anti scalping measures put into place, but problem is scalpers would probably find a way around them. In conclusion I wish to leave you with this statement supply & demand issues are not unique to the computer industry at large. They crop up all over. Any industry can have these type problems and it can happen at any economic scope from the micro economic scale, individual buisness issues. All the way up to the macro economic big picture, i.e. the scope of the entire global economy. Especially, when things happen daily that disrupt the normal balance in each economic arena. I am patiently awaiting the day the economic pendulum moves in the other direction, overstock.

Raspberry Pi Trading NOT Foundation

The RPi400 uses a different main board:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review

I bought 3x RPi4 8GB units from RS Components in October 2021 and still have not received anything. Their ETA is November 2022 – How is it possible that other shops get stock but a massive supplier like RS Components have missed 4-deadlines for my order and on current estimates will wait 13-months for 3 units

It is indeed rather odd that you can place account orders with RS, Farnell & CPC for a few devices for prototyping or testing and see the queue shift like quicksand. Even more perplexing that they can’t or won’t indicate where you are in the queue. Presumably they have a rough idea how many they get each month, so could at worst give some indicative timescales. But no. I need/want to take three or four Pi4 8Gb’s for a spin to compare the performance uplift on a hardware / compute prototype. I got a CM4 and made up some PCBs but stupidly didn’t get more modules before it all got out of hand. I’ve got two 2Gb models, a 4Gb model plus a Pi400 but supergluing memory on top of the SoC doesn’t seem to help. I’d use Mythic Beasts Pi4 Servers but my 200 mile DuPont cables to connect my hardware to the Pi are in use else where at present. Maybe someone could start renting them out …

Does the store in Cambridge have stock?

The Cambridge store doesn’t have full shelves. Last time I looked there were two Pi4s, none compute modules and plenty of Zero2Ws. At least that was what was on display.

I checked with the store manager at the end of this afternoon; the store has stock of everything except 4GB Raspberry Pi 4, which we expect back soon. There’s a limit of one unit per customer on all computers.

I’ve read most of these comments, and understand the frustration from individual consumers, because I am one. I saw one person call these uses “trivial” and “selfish”. OK, I guess helping my kids learn about coding and hardware is selfish lol.

What I don’t understand is why this has to be an all or nothing thing. Allocate half your production to industry and half to individual sales. It’s the only fair thing to do. Shutting out individuals for potentially two years is ridiculous.

If you read the article again, you’ll see that individuals are absolutely not being shut out. Go to an AR, use a preorder function, use RPI locator, buy a Raspberry Pi 400.

Hey, as soon as you let me know where I can preorder a CM4108000 from an AR without having to wait another six months (and RPILocator has told me precisely jack), or barring that use a crowbar to get a RPi400 inside of my GPi case I’ve had sitting here for months, I’ll get right on that.

Getting REAL tired of the PR spin.

“Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake. There is currently enough supply to meet the needs of those customers.” My company employees 22 people and our livelihoods rely on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ Lite. We’ve had 2000 on order from Mouser since September of 2021 with 0 being delivered. We’ve had 800 on order from your approved suppliers (after we found out Mouser was not an approved supplier) for 4 months with 0 deliveries. In fact our estimated delivery date from those suppliers are May 2023! We are in dire need of the compute modules and are getting none. You claim you have enough supply to meet the demand, but receiving 0 in more than 7 months is not acceptable. We’ve personally reached out to Eben and he was helpful in securing us 200 modules, but that only holds us for a single month. I don’t sleep at night worrying about this product shortage.

Feeling for you Brett. My pain is only 10% that of yours. Fingers crossed the situation improves in good time.

Thank you Eben for the update. The GoPiGo robots are definitely in need of Pis at the moment, so I have sent an email. And I am crossing my fingers.

It seems reading this that home users are only using the device for “fun” projects. I use the rpi4 as my main device. I have made the mistake to buy a 2 GB 2 years ago and now need a 4 or 8 GB. Being on the list of my official provider doesn’t help. The promised delivery date keeps being pushed back month after month. I’m just frustrated that my platform choice, sold to me as a desktop replacement, is now a futile use when business have a “livehood” on this. I’ve been working enough in the industry to know some of this uses are a bit wasteful too.

To be fair with Raspberry, and to update my post, my 8GB is on it’s way to delivery, 10 days after this discussion. It seems the sales teams is doing it’s best to provide both sides (pro and personal). I suggest anyone willing to buy to be on official providers waiting lists and expect a bit of delay.

Enlightening information. I appreciate the suggestions and am sorry to hear the problems many continue to face. A difficult problem but a strong RPI community will get us through it. Feeling the need to give my 400 a hug!

i feel shame, i got so many Rpi product rn and they all are unused since i built a proxmox cluster, maybe i should find people locally that need them

Dear Eben, thank you and Raspberry Pi for all your efforts in these times! :-)
Your work is really appreciated.

I’m a Pi user since the 1st one. Currently trying to dabble in Compute Modules and in months have managed to buy only 3 of them with the 3rd one still in the mail somewhere. I REFUSE to buy from 3rd party scalpers on eBay who I think are disgusting. I do recommend the following course of action to make Pi’s available to the individual consumer. Remember when MagPi would give you a Pi Zero for a subscription? I would happily fund a subscription that offered a Pi 4 or even better a CM4 rather than pay triple for a device from a flipper on eBay. While I’d be paying more for the device at least I’d be funding something legit and actually get something for it. Just my 2 cents.

Essentially these are getting skimmed on delivery before they get to the shelves by several different methods then put on selling platforms at huge markups for profits. And if you see ones sold listed as “ bulk” or new without boxes….those are done the same way but from those businesses that are actually getting them as described in the blog but then skimmed and put into the sales platforms. Listed for $35 and sells for $100+, or sells for listed for $15 and sells for $60+, even boards that are no longer in production!

While using Pi’s for automation etc is a nice to have, Pi’s are not the only SBC’s. So whilst Pi Corporation decides to change strategies and let companies get more pi’s, I have moved away from using Pi’s and are using other hardware for projects. PI company … Take note. Kill your original investors/users and you’ll be sorry in the long run.

You say you produce half a million units per month ? Looking at the rpilocator, it looks like resellers get maybe a thousand pieces per month, although I doubt that that’s it. You sell the rest to businesses that add a power supply and case bought in China and sell the “kit” for four times the price. In the absence of rpi in the market, this is actually a really good way to keep businesses in business. Congratulations on the idea. :-(

Reading over the original document, and the comments…. I must say I’m disappointed in the Pi Foundation’s decision to abandon the customers upon who they built their base, in favor of businesses. Since it’s pretty obvious that there will be very few Pi4 8gb units available for retail sale this year, I’ve decided to use other embedded computers for my projects. This whole “availability” thing has gotten so far out of control that is worthless to even think about building a pi project.

I always treated Raspberry board as a small factor computer which might one day fullfill the nature of open software as well as the open hardware and become a reference piece affordable for everyone.I was using the board with all it’s problems with the dream in mind that one day creators and users as well as all the tinkerers and hobbyist will debug it to perfection but than came Pi Pico as well as Pi 400 and my dreams start to fade out very quickly.I was waiting for a long time for proper camera support,debugged 64bit support,working vulkan driver,wayland adoption and competable hardware like Rpi5,but instead of improving all this we get recycled Rpi Zero 2 and weid useless (for me) Pi 400 ZX Spectrum reminiscence unable to even play YouTube video in browser.And this last update is like a nail in the coffin.Sorry,but since today I treat Raspberry Foundation as a profit company and there is no need for me to support you anymore.If you are a profit company please release a hardware without broken software support you charge enough for and customers deserve it.

I’m a commercial customer in need of 200 CM4101000 modules. I know it isn’t much, but we have 50 Model 3 A+ that we offered to donate to the school(s) of the pi foundation’s choice at no cost. While it might be easy to be critical of business customers please remember that some (probably most?) of us remain mindful of the pi foundation’s mission and started out tinkering with rpis at home just like anyone else. If we can get CM4s now and don’t have a need for these 3 A+, my goal is to do everything possible to keep them out of the hands of scalpers; even if it means you have to explain to me what you’re building. I emailed business@rpi about this and I’m still waiting to hear back.

Thanks, Aaron – that’s a generous and considerate offer. I know my colleagues in our commercial team are flat out talking to business customers right now, and while it might take them a bit of time at the moment, I’m sure you will hear back from someone.

This is useless information – all German resellers are out of stock.

May I suggest an slightly other approach of this situation ?
I don’t like it, but I understand the prioritization for business, even if it’s contrary to your initial goal. But as you offer them this, may be you should consider a secondary category to prioritize – students Just find a way to help them to with their projects.
About the products, it’s funny you say that it’s ,ore easy to find components for Pi4. In the last 9 months I saw only once a Pi4 4 Gb on sale at a local authorised dealer, but it was a very low stock and it was on sale with a lot of “accessories”, mostly unnecessary.. However Pi Zero 2 it’s almost in permanent sale and with plenty of stock.. I just bought one last week, perhaps 1Gb of ram would be better, as it’s unable to open a browser in latest distribution. And btw – it use old components – from Pi3+…

Can you tell me the name of your local supplier that has the PI Zero’s on sale? We need them desperately.
Thanks

It is next to impossible to get a Pi 4 8GB. I am on every waiting list here in the US and monitor the rpilocator site everyday that I can, around work. Really frustrating as a maker and Pi enthusiast but I understand the supply issues. I just wish there was one way to get on a list and be fulfilled when my number came up. I have been trying since December.

I understamd the need to keep the businesses going but it’s also extremely frustrating as a hobbyist. I’ve had a change alert set up on pi locator for any CM4s in the UK for a while now and haven’t had anything reported. I’ve got my eye on a turing pi when they are released but unfortunately with the stock levels as they are there is not much point in buying one as there would be no way for me to even check it is working. Not to mention the increased demand it would cause (assuming most who buy one will want 4 CM4s).

Hi RPi, After reading through all the comments above I think some people and being very unfair as world-wide shortages seem to be plaguing a lot of industries these days and I realise your company are at the mercy of suppliers. However my main criticism is that until now nobody has informed us of the updated situation and it’s more than frustrating to see your website and your resellers website’s showing product details as normal until you click on the order page and receive the “Out of Stock” sign – sometimes barely visible. Surely with todays technology you can provide more regular updates and a clearer indication of stock availability! Maybe your sales/marketing operation needs an update? Otherwise I want to see the Raspberry Pi thrive and continue to improve as I am sure most of your long term supporters do. Sometimes I think you should wave your own flag more – 40mn and counting is some achievement! (Or is it nearer to 50mn now?) Keep up the good work (maybe you’re currently secretly advanced on RPi 5!)
Paul

I am a retired IT professional. One of the joys in life is the opportunity to volunteer in my community. One of those joys includes purchasing a half dozen Raspberry PI’s at a time and donating to local schools with the emphasis on providing them to children from lower social-economic backgrounds. Tell me if I am wrong, but I believed these PIs were created to democratise technology by making it more accessible. These PIs to give them first time access to technology… the excitement generated for these children in learning to create projects, learning to code and is as way say …. priceless. That is payment enough for me. The experience these children have suffered as the impact of COVID-19 has taken toll on in their education and their futures and gives me great cause for concern. If and when this serious supply chain is ever returned to normal, take a moment and consider. If you buy a device or a kit for yourself, buy one (or more) for your local disadvantaged school. Remember, not all of us become greedy opportunists and buy up all the available stock to sell at extortionate prices on eBay et al… it’s called investing in the future. You will feel better. Trust me.

Raspberry Pi – Computing for everybody (*)

(*) who can place a 10000 unit minimum order

During the last 6 months I could only buy Raspberry Pi Kits (okdo etc) for astronomic prices (each Raspberry Pi 4 for $160). It’s not only abusive prices (and on normal retail stores not ebay or Amazon resellers!), it’s also a lot E-waste. I have now 6 Raspberry Pi cases I won’t use, 12 micro HDMI cables, 6 micro SD cards, 6 fans all of no use, only to be able to buy the Raspberry Pi’s. As private end user I feel screwed and milked.

I hope the supply chains get cleaned up. Getting tired of modern AAA gaming, the drama, the in-app-purchases, NFTs; it has all ruined computing and fun. Going back to my retro days when computing and arcades were FUN. Only thing I have seen through this mess is rampant price gouging on Amazon and ebay. Sad really :-(

Please raise your prices! Offer quantity discounts, but we will pay ~$50-100 for a Raspberry PI Zero 2. We will pay this even if you don’t raise the price, because of scalpers. It would be better for you to get the money to ramp up production!

I have loved the affordability of the Raspberry Pi computers and I’ve purchased about a dozen to share with a group of seniors who are terrified of “messing up” their main computers (upon which they depend). But I agree that it would be better to let the price rise (at least somewhat) in the short term to help the market sort itself out. As stated earlier, that would put the extra income in the hands of those who produce these magnificent machines rather than in the hands of those who are scalping them. Thanks to everyone who has worked to make the Raspberry Pi what it is today.

The vision was: affordable, hackable, computers for kids and normal people. Education, creativity, etcetera.

In reality, there is scarcity.

By choice, “business” customers get preferential treatment, with guaranteed low prices. So most RPi’s end up invisibly embedded in industrial products, or…are re-sold for easy profit.

The effect: Scarce, expensive, computers for normal people. None of the excess profit is used to reduce scarcity, or invested in the future of RPi.

This does not sound right.

My approved reseller does not take pre-orders. They have **nothing** to sell.

Read the article again: you are not limited to ordering from only one reseller. Look around and see if you can find another.

Then let us know where they are available in EU at the moment. When you been to rpilocator.com the last time? Do you ever had a look to this website or just copy&paste them here. There is nothing available except for 150€ on Amazon. And YOU deliver to these resellers and they make easy profit. And the popularity of the PI is also based on the community – if you prefer business there is no community anymore. Its YOU feeding this resellers to make big profit, thats something you shoulkd have under control. Sorry for the hard words but its getting more and more ridiculous at the moment with Raspberrys excuses

Have you actually tried looking at rpilocator.com?

Because right now, this instant, a seller in Austria has Pi 4s in both 4 and 2GB, for 69 and 60 euros respectively.

I have looked at rpilocator several times this week, and every time I have looked, there has always been at least one seller with Pi 4s in stock at the RRP, and when I look at the seller’s site, they do indeed have stock.

1 Seller – 1Seller with a few Pi4, is this the outcome from all your efforts? They only ship within Austria, so only for this huge country of Austria. I also looking every day, several times a day, on a daily base there is 1 or 2 resellers having a small stock. Lets focus on the business customers – they order big, resell on Amazon for insane prices – not your problem right – you get the same money and dont need to bother around with small orders from resellers? And all your fantastic “Business” customers for sure contribute to projects and share code, experience and so on (What made the Pi what it is at the moment) Ah right, not needed anymore – business is running and money is rolling – well done

I think this is becoming very unproductive, so I’ve marked your profile so any subsequent comments will have to be checked by a moderator before being published. You’re clearly angry, but your assessment of what a business use case is is just conspiratorial and wrong.

We speak to all of the customers who come to us directly, and we learn about what they’re doing and what they need. Very often their requirements are only for Pis in the tens of units or fewer, but they need them for factory automation, monitoring, prototyping and so on. We do not sell to people whose intention is to sell units on at a markup, and I don’t believe that you have drawn that conclusion based on reading anything here. You seem keen to pick a fight. Could you please find somebody else’s platform to do that on?

This seller in Austria has RPi 4GB for 69 euros virtually …
You cannot buy it without PSU (10 euro) and shipping in EU for 30 euro, so total is 109,99 euros

I’m not sure what vendors you are finding, but as for US vendors, it has only gotten worse since the start of this year. I’m looking for Pi Zero 2w’s and everyone seems to have been out of stock for at least a month, usually more.

The fact that you guys are essentially allowing zero stock to hit the consumer market is just insane. And probably going to push a lot of us away from the Pi platform forever.

Hi – I have been watching RPI locator for a while. Here in the USA, your authorized reseller PiShop has shown zero units since 18 March. Newark shows June 2023. We use the Pi in home automation projects, with custom HATs and custom cases, and end user access to the Pi OS is a great feature. I think RPI Trading has been wildly successful in 100% dominance of this market, the increased demand is 99% real – but you don’t trust it. So, create a futures market for business buyers to be able to contract multi unit delivery monthly, this would establish the fair market value and eliminate middlemen. Use the profits to subsidize single unit buyers at low costs. You have a hot commodity and no real competition in an inflationary time.

About 2 weeks ago I signed up at approved vendor (pishop) to be notified when rpi4 board and kit were in stock again. Coincidentally as I was reading this supply chain thread, pishop sent email to let me know the kit I wanted was in stock. 15 minutes later my order was placed and is supposed to arrive in a week or 2 — fingers crossed!
No idea how much more stock they have at the moment, but fwiw my “sign up to be notified” experience looks like it may work out well.

You are doing the best you can in a difficult situation. You certainly aren’t the only electronics manufacturer with very long lead times.

However I did get lucky, and after monitoring rpilocator.com for a week or so, reviewing Adafruit’s FAQ on how they are releasing what stock they do get, and monitoring Adafruit very frequently for a couple of days, I did manage to get a RPi 4 Model B – 2GB RAM for the project I am building. So it does work if you have the time to do all that. Have faith everyone!

We use mainly Raspberry Pi. We’re using a mix of the Pi 3B+ and Pi Pico at the moment. We do need more Pi 3B+ and Pi Zero. The Pico can only do so much.

Kinda makes me wonder why RPI Trading ships WAY too much rpi’s to Europe, which are in lower demand.

Perhaps halt raspberry pi shipments for a couple of months so you can stockpile them? I rather would have easy access to raspberry pi’s for a few months at a time than to keep checking rpilocator for hours.

I know that will increase rpi scalpers during the stockpile times, but do it for long enough, the scalpers will be deprived as well. I also understand the business deprivation factors.

I have little to no understanding for companies being prioritised. I ordered a Pi4 8GB around 7 months ago which I would‘ve needed for my university course 2 months ago.
Thanks for nothing.

Suggestion.. More frequent updates in here regarding supply chain information.. eg, current backlog, and estimated shipments and dates. Might make everyone feel a little more connected.

Well said. Other suppliers give weekly updates, including tables of produced units, forecasts, etc.

I have had a tiny bit of success with RPIlocator but it is getting increasingly difficult to score a Pi in the US. In Stock indications will literally stay up for the 2-3 minutes the refresh time is. 3 times I have caught stock at Digikey, gone to their page and ordered stock only for it to go from “Immediate Release” to “Backorder” while the page shows sufficient quantity in stock. When Digikey reps told me that until you actually make the purchase the stock is up for grabs. So in the 45 seconds it takes to put it in your cart and check out it is already gone. Most sites hold it as yours as soon as it is placed in your cart. Because of this policy I cancelled my Digikey account. Also I have done “Notify Me When In Stock” requests for some time and have literally never received an email from anyone. I love Raspberry Pi but have found the recommended methods for obtaining one to be non-working. It really is a matter of luck to obtain one.

I appreciate the dilemma that you find yourselves in, but your official resellers are contributing to the problem. Having stock of or taking preorders for highly inflated kits is essentially tantamount to sanctioned scalping. There’s no logical reason that Canakit, for example, should be able to sell me a $135 kit full of stuff that I don’t need including a 1 GB Raspberry Pi 4, and not just sell me the Raspberry Pi 4 itself. This behavior shouldn’t be allowed under your official reseller program, as, as a consumer, I’d much rather pay a scalper $60-$80 for the unit itself, even though that’s an inflated price for the 1GB model.

How do i become an approved reseller? Please share the details .

Our Foundation in India placed two orders totaling 301 Raspberry PI 4 units with 8GB memory in December 2021 with element14 in Bengaluru. We use RPI4 machines to teach Maths using Khan Academy to low-income students in UP, India (one of the poorest states). We were told March 12, 2022 delivery. We are still waiting. Now, we really need these units. We paid the distributor 100% in advance to buy these units. Any possibility of allotting additional units for low-income countries like India. Thanks

Hi Rajeev. If you put this in an email to [email protected], my colleagues will do their best to help.

Thank you. Sent email. Our order total 310 units.

I e-mail business@raspberrypi . We received a response from We have been waiting for six months now for our 310 units from element14 in India (100% payment up front.) Our foundation needs to deploy these units this summer in charitable schools in north India. We put these RPI4 units in computer labs to teach Mathematics using Khan Academy. element14 states that these units are not available from the OEM. Once we receive these 310 units, we need to place an order for another 500 units to expand our efforts in India. How can Raspberry PI Trading team help?

We received 150 units out of 310 units last month. Thank you! We are waiting for the next batch of 160 units in India when we placed the order on January 17, 2022 through element14, Bangalore, India.

I ordered from an official reseller 5 months ago. They sent me two ‘delayed shipment’ notices, failed to deliver, then just stopped sending updates. Their website now lists backorder delivery as November. Wherever your production is actually going, seems Asia is not on the list.

All I need is one 8Gb Pi4… just one. My old Pi died in October and I’ve not been able to find a single one since despite searching constantly and using RPILocator. I just can’t get the order in fast enough before everything is gone from every single retailer that doesn’t try to rake their customers over the coals. The only “Approved reseller” in my country that seems to get stock will only sell the boards at inflated prices because they refuse to sell anything but “Extreme Bundles”. I don’t even know why I bother looking anymore, it’s beyond frustrating.

I’ve had a lot of fun making things with Pis over the last decade but sadly I have to give up now, clearly this is a waste of time. So go ahead and prioritize corps that are gobbling them up by the thousands because the individuals that want to learn and build are of no importance, we don’t make enough money for you.

I had this same case. For me just enough will be a 4GB pi4. My old Pi – Pi1 B+ stay work but is tooo slow.
On official “Approved reseller” can I buy a Pi at set with a case, sd 32GB, charger, RJ45 cabel, hdm cabel for “only” 749 PLN (170 USD). Itself Pi cost 319 PLN (72 USD), itself (on this same site) case, sd 32GB, charger, RJ45 cabel, hdm cabel – cost 128 PLN (29 USD).
To sum up if i buy a set with 4Gb Pi4 then I overpaid a 302 PLN (~69 USD ) – this almost cost the second 4gb pi4.
I understand “free market” but this happened at official “approved reseller”. Pleas do something with that

We started the process of switching over to using the pi from a Technologics board in 2021 in three different products. Two are launched and a third is still pending because we can not get stock of either the 3B+ or the 4. I have been buying a few here and there on Ebay to keep things going, but it is tough. Of course yours is not the only part that is causing us problems. I have orders in at Mouser since Feb. Just waiting!!

I get the fact that the authorized sellers should make a little money selling Pi’s, but I have noticed that some sellers are marking their kits up by quite a premium. Recently when I was trying to find a Pi-4 at a reasonable price PiShop.us was selling a kit with a Pi-4 4GB with heat sinks, power adapter, case, and fan. When adding the price of each item individually, there was more that a $25 markup on on the kit. They didn’t make the Pi available for purchase by itself, but if I wanted to buy a kit I could get up to 5 of them for a steep markup. Why, if they have Pi’s available to put I to an overpriced kit, are they not making them available without a kit?

can someone tell when will be stock again?

Today left 3 months after announced stock problem.
Some update about supply-chain?
How many of boards can by released per month? More then half a million or less?
I hunt for my pi4 -4gb for 4 months….

This is quite annoying because some of us (regular customers) were willing to buy only a Raspberry Pi 4 single board and a case. We are being forced to buy a kit with wired keyboard, wired mouse, book and stuff we don’t need in offered in this 400 model.

Resellers have more stock of these raspberry all in one keyboard-computer which people are not buying or looking for. People don’t need another keyboard/mouse and more wires around.

Other mini PCs sold in market have questionable quality, and now I guess the cheapest alternative computer for me to be buy would be a Pentaform Abacus instead which is not a typical mini PC, and although it’s a computer within a keyboard, it avoids the extra stuff I don’t need.

I’m really impressed by the lack of planning of Raspberry executive team.

If you guys don’t have a product to sell, don’t add a Buy button in your site, which is misleading information, making us think there are single board computers available, when there aren’t. Disappointing experience so far.

The 400 does not have a Raspberry Pi 4 inside it so I wouldn’t advise you to buy one (singular or in a kit) if you’re hoping to extract a 4).
We had no hand in the global chip shortage which is causing you frustration, so no amount of “planning” could have prevented it.
We’re also not planning on altering our website design as any time soon as we have plenty of other products available to buy now.

Any update on stock levels? Looking for 3 Pi 4 4GB for a project.

Hey John, (its been more than 3 months)
How about sharing an update on the status of manufacturing, backlogs, and YOUR best guess on when the delivery situation will return to normal?

Publishing another blog with no new info wouldn’t be that useful and we still don’t know when the supply chain issue will be rectified. It affects everyone and they haven’t told us either. Our fingers are crossed just as tightly as yours for a speedy return to normal!

Hey guys,

I believe that we all can understand that there are chip shortages all over the world at this moment but what’s even more annoying to me is the ‘not knowing’ about what is going on with the supply chain of the raspberry pi’s. I follow the rpilocator.com website and I really get the impression that there are very few Pi’s being built and distributed to retailers.

So I’m wondering is there enough Pi’s being built (weekly, monthly) in the factories ( at maximum capacity)? If yes, where are these Pi’s going? To the general public? To Companies?
I would appreciate if the foundation could break it down in numbers for us. Because there is this ‘silence’ and it makes me feel like nothing is being produced and I’m waiting here in vain.

Please keep us updated.

Hola. There’s silence because there’s no new news. We won’t be blogging “no change” regularly but *will* definitely let everyone know (shouting from the rooftops style) as soon as we know anything.

Production numbers are big business-sensitive secrets and I will get mega told off for announcing them in the comments section.

It’s understandable that you can’t give production numbers. However would it be possible to give any indication that may help the people who want to buy a Pi some hope. I’m not even asking for percentages. But an indication of how often you can supply the official retail sellers may help a little… And again, I’m not asking how many units or when deliveries are made.
Also, although I love tinkering with various computer, microcontrollers and electronics, if people need a Pi to go with a project developed by someone else, it may not be practical to use a Pico, Pi 4 or a Pi400.

Ashley, Actually giving a regular update would be better, even if the update is nothing new. At least we know the line is still open and has not dropped. I see reports of “half a million boards made monthly” for the last few months. I would think there would be some sort of catchup starting to happen.

While we wait for the Raspberry Pis to be available again, it’s worth noting there are some alternative SBCs on the marked.

We got a begin of September, today has passed 4 months (from may) of looking at rpilocator, and I still wait. Polish vendors got only one time, only one board ( RPI4-MODBP-2GB). From my point of view this situation are very unfair. Other vendors at France, Deutschland, Nederland, have more delivery.
I try to bought from vendors outside Poland, but its hard and sometimes shipping are available only inside of the country.

@RaspberryPi, pleas inform us, as its posssible, about changes at production limits

We are getting to the stage now where the user base are going to become fed up of waiting and move to competitors. time to sort this.

We’d love it sorted too but nothing we can do about a global supply chain crisis. Doing our very, very best!

You should sell it yourself without intermediaries with a limit of one item

Thank you for being responsive in the comments of this blog, it is nice to know that we can expect a clear notification when supply will make it easier to purchase these. I love the PI Zero W that I’ve been able to get. Good luck with scaling up further :)

Rich, what competitors? This isn’t a situation where RPi trading has plenty of CPUs and is simply refusing to build boards. Any competitor is going to have similar supply chain issues.
I’m pretty sure that if you do have an alternate supplier for devices that meet your needs, RPi Trading is very happy for you to move to them because it will make you happier and will cost them _nothing_ in sales. (Anything Raspberry Pis that you’re not buying are going to be immediately snapped up by someone else anyway.)

It appears that some people are drying up stocks and selling RPi-s at inflated price on Amazon and elsewhere.

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