Raspberry Pi 5 16GB price hits $385: who should still buy one

The official list price of the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is $385 in the US. Before this change it was $305, so the jump works out to about 26 percent in one go.

This is the fourth rise for this one model. Here is how it has climbed, using the company’s list prices:

• January 2025: launches at $120.
• Three earlier increases: in April 2026, February 2026 and December 2025, each one adding to the bill.
• Just before this week: $305.
• Now: $385, more than triple the launch price.

Raspberry Pi announces prices in US dollars. Its Approved Resellers in the UK and Canada set local prices that follow the official list, but the company has not published separate pound or Canadian dollar figures for this round, so check your local reseller rather than trusting a quick conversion.

Only products with 16GB of memory were touched. Here’s the rundown:

• Raspberry Pi 5 16GB: up $80 to $385.
• Compute Module 5, 16GB versions: up $40, now between $375 and $415 depending on the variant. That module launched at $135.
• Raspberry Pi 500+: unchanged. The keyboard computer also has 16GB of RAM but stays at $485.
• Raspberry Pi 5 with less memory: not part of this round.

That last point needs a footnote. The 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 already went up in early October, by $12.50 to $77.50, and the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 rose the same amount to $67.50. For comparison, the 2GB Pi 5 cost $50 at the start of 2025, the 4GB was $60 and the 8GB was $80. The 1GB boards were left alone in October.

Memory is the short answer. Upton says there is a lack of other suppliers for the 16GB memory chip the board uses, on top of shortages of other parts. In its April update, Raspberry Pi said the price of the LPDDR4 memory used in the Pi 4 and Pi 5 had risen seven-fold in a year.

The squeeze comes from AI. Data center builders are buying up memory in huge volumes, and chip makers would rather sell to them than to hobby board makers. Raspberry Pi says it has tried to soften the blow by approving chips from other manufacturers and by raising prices only on the worst-hit models, not across the whole range.

Upton calls the memory crunch hard but temporary, and says the company will roll back its increases once memory costs fall. Nobody has put a date on that, and many in the industry expect high AI demand to keep memory expensive for years.

For most buyers, no. The extra memory only pays off for a short list of jobs:

• running bigger local AI language models than smaller boards can hold;
• heavy engineering simulations, such as fluid dynamics;
• lots of apps or containers running at once on a home server;
• a fuller desktop system like Ubuntu used as a daily computer.

If your project is a file server, a retro games box or a media center, a 4GB or 8GB board is often enough, and a 1GB or 2GB board covers many simple tasks. Raspberry Pi itself is telling customers not to buy headroom they won’t use, and to try trimming the memory their software needs.

There’s another option the company keeps pointing to: older models. The Raspberry Pi 3B, 3A+ and Zero family use an older type of memory that Raspberry Pi bought in bulk, and it has said it doesn’t expect price rises for them. The new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4, at $83.75, sits in between.

At this price the 16GB Pi 5 is creeping toward the cost of a small desktop mini PC, and that changes the math for many people. Even when the board was $120, a few dollars more could buy a mini PC with a faster Intel processor, at least 8GB of memory, storage, a case and a power supply included. A bare Pi 5 comes with none of those extras.

Makers are already splitting their projects two ways:

• Small, single-job gadgets: microcontroller boards such as the Raspberry Pi Pico or ESP32 handle sensors, lights and simple automation for a fraction of the price.
• Bigger computing jobs: an entry-level mini PC or x86 board gives you more speed, more expansion and runs Windows or almost any Linux system.

The Pi still wins on size, low power use, its huge community and its role as the brains of DIY hardware builds. If you need those things, a lower-memory Pi 5 is the better value buy right now.

Price spikes attract opportunists, and Raspberry Pi has warned about it directly. A few practical tips:

1. Buy from an Approved Reseller. These official partners agree to stick to Raspberry Pi’s published maximum prices, and the company lists them by country on its website.
2. Be wary of marketplace listings. Raspberry Pi says some sellers are charging inflated prices or shipping boards that aren’t what they claim, including fakes advertised with more memory than they really have.
3. Look for older stock. Right after this rise, some big retailers still had the 16GB board listed below the new list price. That won’t last, but it’s worth a quick check before you pay $385.
4. Size down first. Test your project on a cheaper board before deciding you need 16GB.