Raspberry Pi prices have moved up again, and this time the reason is memory. In two separate announcements, Raspberry Pi said a shortage of LPDDR4 and LPDDR5 has pushed RAM costs high enough that it had to increase prices on multiple products.
On December 1, 2025, the company raised pricing on several Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 5, and Compute Module SKUs as memory costs started climbing.
Then on February 2, 2026, they announced another round of increases, this time across selected Pi 4, Pi 5, Compute Module 4, and Compute Module 5 SKUs.
What changed
From the February update, Raspberry Pi listed additional rises by memory density:
- 1GB: no change
- 2GB: +$10
- 4GB: +$15
- 8GB: +$30
- 16GB: +$60
That is why the biggest jumps are on higher-memory variants.
Cumulative Pi 5 MSRP shift
Combining the December 2025 and February 2026 changes, Raspberry Pi 5 pricing moved like this:
- 1GB: $45 -> $45 -> $45
- 2GB: $50 -> $55 -> $65
- 4GB: $60 -> $70 -> $85
- 8GB: $80 -> $95 -> $125
- 16GB: $120 -> $145 -> $205
In other words, the Pi 5 16GB is up $85 versus original MSRP.
Why RAM is the problem
Raspberry Pi’s explanation is straightforward: it can still get memory chips, but the prices are far above what they were before the shortage. That means even when boards stay in stock, retail prices can still rise because RAM is now a larger share of the bill of materials.
The company also said this is not expected to be a long-term policy. It expects pricing to improve again once memory supply and cost normalize.
What this means for buyers
If you only need GPIO, lightweight Linux, and basic maker workloads, lower-RAM models still offer better value than the high-memory variants right now. But for heavier desktop use, local AI workloads, or memory-hungry containers, the 8GB+ models now carry a much bigger premium than before these two rounds of increases.
For now, Raspberry Pi appears to be balancing availability and margin rather than limiting shipments. So the short version is: boards are still shipping, but some of the most popular SKUs are temporarily more expensive until the RAM market cools down.