The Raspberry Pi Foundation has increased the price of the 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 model from $65 to $77.50. This $12.50 hike follows a previous price adjustment for the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4, which now costs $67.50. The foundation attributes these changes to the rising costs of memory in the global market.
The 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 was launched in August 2024 with an initial price of $50. Since then, the cost has risen by 55% over two years. Other models in the lineup are currently priced at $110 for the 4GB version, $180 for the 8GB version, and $305 for the 16GB version.
Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton stated that memory prices have reached an unsustainable level, forcing the foundation to abandon its strategy of shielding entry-level models from price increases. The surge in demand for DRAM, LPDDR, and HBM memory from AI data centers continues to drive up costs across the entire supply chain.
The Raspberry Pi 5 features a quad-core Cortex-A76 processor clocked at 2.4GHz, a VideoCore VII GPU, and the proprietary RP1 I/O controller. Despite the price hike, the device supports PCIe 2.0 and dual 4K 60Hz display output, maintaining its utility for embedded projects and lightweight servers.
The foundation has not provided a timeline for potential price reductions. As long as the global memory market remains constrained by AI server demand, the pricing of Raspberry Pi products may continue to face upward pressure, challenging the platform's historical positioning as a low-cost single-board computer.
