Raspberry Pi 5 16GB goes up by $80 to $385, and 16GB Compute Module 5 boards rise by $40

Raspberry Pi raised prices on its highest-memory boards on 2 November 2026. In a post signed by Eben Upton, the company says the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 now costs $80 more, at $385, and every 16GB variant of Compute Module 5 goes up by $40. The new CM5 prices are listed in the product brief on the Compute Module 5 page rather than in the post itself.

Why now

The company points to 16GB DRAM specifically. It has been making selective increases for about two years as memory costs climbed, and says it has tried to soften them, including by qualifying alternative parts so it has more sourcing options. For 16GB chips there is no alternative supply, and other component shortages make it worse, so this round lands on the highest-density products.

One 16GB product is left alone. The Raspberry Pi 500+, the keyboard computer that also carries 16GB of RAM, keeps its current price. The post does not mention the 1GB to 8GB Pi 5 boards, so their prices are unchanged by this announcement.

What it means for home servers

A Pi 5 is a common home for Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, Node-RED or a small MQTT broker, and those jobs rarely need 16GB. Raspberry Pi itself suggests checking whether a project needs that much memory before buying, and points to lower-memory variants, older models and memory optimisation as cheaper routes. For a typical smart home controller, an 8GB or 4GB board is the obvious place to look first. Setups that run heavier work next to home automation, such as local video analysis, several containers or local language models, are the ones where 16GB is hard to avoid.

Compute Module 5 is used inside third-party controllers, panels and industrial boxes, so a $40 increase on the 16GB modules may filter through to the prices of finished products built on them.

Watch the resellers

The post also warns that some sellers are using the memory shortage to charge inflated prices or to sell products that are not what they claim to be. Raspberry Pi says its products are available at official prices through its Approved Reseller network and suggests checking the reseller list when in doubt.

The company calls the memory situation "difficult but ultimately temporary" and says it plans to roll the increases back once memory costs fall. It gives no date for that.