Raspberry Pi has raised prices on its highest-memory boards again. In a post on its news site dated November 2, 2026, the company said that from that day the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 goes up by $80 to $385. All 16GB variants of the Compute Module 5 go up by $40. The 16GB Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard computer keeps its current price.
The company gave two reasons. It has no alternative supply of 16GB DRAM, and other components are also in short supply. It said it has avoided blanket increases across the product line. The rise covers only the 16GB products named in the post. The announcement does not list the new Compute Module 5 prices. It points readers to the product brief on the Compute Module 5 product page for those figures.
What changed today
Here is what Raspberry Pi's own announcement says:
- Raspberry Pi 5, 16GB: up $80, to $385, effective November 2, 2026.
- Compute Module 5, 16GB variants: up $40 each. The updated prices are in the CM5 product brief, not in the announcement.
- Raspberry Pi 500+ (16GB keyboard computer): price held.
If the board rose by $80 to reach $385, it cost $305 just before the change. That is our arithmetic, not a figure from the announcement. It does not match the most recent price in our sources: Tom's Hardware's October 2026 table lists the 16GB Pi 5 at $220, the same as its April 2026 entry. None of the sources used here explain the gap between $220 and the implied $305, so readers should treat that step as undocumented here.
The post also covers lower-capacity boards. Raspberry Pi suggests that buyers who don't need 16GB integrate lower-density variants or earlier models, or optimise memory use in their applications. It calls the memory situation temporary and says it looks forward to rolling back its price increases when memory costs fall. It also warns about sellers charging inflated prices and points buyers to its Approved Resellers.
How the 16GB Pi 5 got here
This is the latest of several increases this year, and the 16GB board has taken the largest share of them.
- Launch: $120.
- December 2025: $145.
- February 2026: $205. Tom's Hardware reported this as more than 70 percent above the original MSRP.
- April and October 2026: $220, according to Tom's Hardware's October 2026 table.
- November 2, 2026: $385. Raspberry Pi says this is up $80.
Against the $120 launch price, today's $385 is just over three times as much.
The earlier increases were broader. In the February 2026 round, Tom's Hardware reported that every Pi 4, Pi 5, CM4 and CM5 with 2GB of memory or more was affected. The Pi 400, Pi Zero, Pi 3 and 1GB models kept their prices. The Pi 500+ went from $180 to $259 in that round, according to Tom's Hardware's table, which listed the Micro Center price, and the outlet noted that Adafruit was listing it at $280. Windows Central covered the same round as the second increase in three months. It said CEO Eben Upton made the announcement and that the cause was memory demand driven by AI.
An October 2026 round reached down to the cheapest boards. Tom's Hardware reported that the 2GB Pi 5 went from $65 to $77.50 and the 2GB Pi 4 from $55 to $67.50. It attributed this to rising LPDDR4 and LPDDR5 costs. According to the outlet, Upton confirmed that maintaining the previous pricing for lower-capacity models was no longer feasible.
Today's increase is narrower than those rounds but much steeper for the products it covers. It targets only 16GB products. That fits the company's explanation: for 16GB DRAM there is no alternative supply to switch to.
Why hold the Pi 500+?
Raspberry Pi's post says it is holding the price of the Pi 500+, which it calls its premium all-in-one desktop computer built into a mechanical keyboard, and which also has 16GB of RAM. It does not say why that product was held when the bare 16GB board and the 16GB compute modules were not. We won't guess at the reason. Both the Pi 500+ and the 16GB Pi 5 carry 16GB of memory, but they are now priced on different terms.
The announcement also does not restate the Pi 500+'s current dollar price. The $259 figure above comes from February 2026 reporting. Check an Approved Reseller for today's price.
What It Means for Makers
Who is affected. There are two groups. The first is people who buy a 16GB Pi 5 for memory-heavy projects. The second is product teams that designed the 16GB Compute Module 5 into a carrier board. For a hobbyist the $80 board increase is the bigger shock. For anyone building CM5 hardware in quantity, $40 per module is the number that changes the bill of materials. Those teams should get the exact per-variant prices from the CM5 product brief, because the announcement does not list them.
What Raspberry Pi suggests instead. The company says buyers should make sure they are not paying for more memory than they need, by integrating lower-density variants or earlier Raspberry Pi models, or by optimising memory use in their applications. Those options are not untouched by price rises either. The 2GB Pi 5 was already $77.50 after the October 2026 increase reported by Tom's Hardware. Today's announcement covers only the 16GB products it names and adds no new increase below 16GB.
If you need 16GB in a Raspberry Pi form factor. The Pi 500+ is the 16GB product Raspberry Pi singled out for a price hold in this post. It is a keyboard computer, not a bare board, so it does not replace a Pi 5 inside an enclosure or a CM5 on a custom carrier.
Status and availability. The new prices took effect on November 2, 2026, according to Raspberry Pi. These are price changes to products already on sale. No new hardware was announced. The company calls the memory situation temporary and says it looks forward to rolling back increases when memory costs fall, but it gives no date.
Buying tips. Raspberry Pi says its products are available at official prices through its Approved Resellers and warns of sellers charging inflated prices. When list prices change this often and this sharply, check the current list price before ordering, especially from marketplaces.
What we don't know yet
There are three open questions. The exact new CM5 16GB prices are only in the product brief. We could not find independent detail on today's change beyond Raspberry Pi's own post. And it is unclear whether the 16GB increase is the end of this round or a step that other memory tiers will follow. We will update this story if Raspberry Pi publishes more.
