Supply chain woes lead to a “temporary” Raspberry Pi 4 price hike

Pandemic-driven supply chain problems have prompted the first-ever price increase for a Raspberry Pi product, according to Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton. Acknowledging that the 2GB configuration of the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Raspberry Pi Zero had been particularly hard-hit by shortages, Upton announced that the price of the 2GB Pi 4 would increase from $35 to $45 and that a previously discontinued version of the Pi 4 with 1GB of RAM would be reintroduced at $35.

The price increase for the 2GB Pi 4 and reintroduction of the 1GB model essentially reverts the Pi 4 lineup to where it was back in February of 2020, when the Pi Foundation cut the price of the 2GB Pi 4 from $45 to $35, a price cut that it said was "permanent" at the time. The March 2020 issue of the official Raspberry Pi Magazine (PDF) said that the 1GB model had been "retired."

Upton expressed hope that the price increase would be "temporary" and said that "we see early signs that the supply chain situation is starting to ease."

"These changes in pricing are not here to stay," Upton wrote. "As global supply chain issues moderate, we’ll keep revisiting this issue, and we want to get pricing back to where it was as fast as we can."

Shortages of 40 nm chips also mean that the older Raspberry Pi 3B+ is being "deprioritized" in favor of other Raspberry Pi 3 variants; the company keeps manufacturing older products primarily for "industrial and embedded" customers who need to use specific Pi boards for extended periods of time. Upton recommends that in the long term, customers who rely on the Pi 3B+ plan to migrate to the 1GB version of the Pi 4.