The 16 GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 now costs $305. It launched at $120 in January 2025, and that is the third hike in a row driven by memory prices: $120, then $145, then $205, and now $305 after a $100 increase.
Jeff Geerling put the comparison that matters on the table. A Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB, a 512 GB SSD, a 27 W power supply, a case and an RTC battery came to $246.95 in January. A GMKTec Nucbox G3 Plus with an Intel N100, 16 GB and a 512 GB drive was $246.99. Four cents. Tom’s Hardware checked the listings and found the same parity across Beelink, Acemagic and Geekom.
And that was before the latest round. The bare 16 GB board is now $305 on its own, while a Beelink S13 with an Intel N150, 16 GB and a 512 GB SSD is $269 and an Acemagic Vista V1 with the same loadout is $217.54. The mini PC is faster, has room for the drive inside it, and you do not buy the parts separately.
What the price ladder looks like now
On October 1, Raspberry Pi raised its 2 GB variants by $12.50, to $67.50 for a Pi 4 and $77.50 for a Pi 5, after Eben Upton wrote that holding the low end down had become unsustainable. A 1 GB Pi 5 was introduced at $45 in December to keep an entry price alive, and the Pi 5 still starts there. The Pi 4 with 8 GB went from $75 to $85 in the first round of increases.
Raspberry Pi 6: “as a step”, not a jump
Asked about the next generation in his usual Reddit AMA, co-founder Eben Upton said a Raspberry Pi 6 is coming but gave no timeline, describing it as a step rather than a jump. Reports this site could not confirm with Raspberry Pi itself place it no earlier than early 2028.
What to do? The Pi is no longer the automatic budget choice for everything a secondhand office box can do, and the memory shortage behind the price is not going away: retail memory is up 500 percent in twelve months, and the makers do not expect an end of it. What still belongs to the Pi is low idle power, silence and GPIO with cases to fit it.
Sources: Raspberry Pi, Jeff Geerling, Tom’s Hardware, The Verge
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