Raspberry Pi 5 Updates April 2026: Price Changes, New SKUs, and AI Acceleration

April 2026 brought significant changes to the Raspberry Pi 5 lineup. Memory-driven price increases hit every model with 4GB or more RAM, a new $45 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 launched, and firmware improvements continue squeezing more performance out of the quad-core Cortex-A76 chip. Here is everything that changed and what it means for developers, hobbyists, and anyone building edge AI projects.

Key Takeaways

• Raspberry Pi 5 prices increased by $25 to $100+ depending on RAM, driven by a 7x spike in LPDDR4 DRAM costs
• A new 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 launched at $45, the cheapest way to get Pi 5 hardware
• The AI HAT+ 2 ($130) delivers 40 TOPS of on-device inference with 8GB dedicated RAM
• Firmware updates have added +44 single-core and +177 multi-core Geekbench points since launch
• Raspberry Pi OS runs Debian 13 "Trixie" with Linux kernel 6.12.47

April 2026 Price Changes

The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced its third round of memory-driven price increases on April 1, 2026. The cause is straightforward: global demand for LPDDR4 DRAM from AI infrastructure buildouts has pushed memory costs up roughly 7x, and Raspberry Pi cannot absorb those margins on a product already sold near cost.

| Model | Previous Price | New Price (April 2026) | Increase | |---|---|---|---| | Raspberry Pi 5 1GB (NEW) | N/A | $45 | New SKU | | Raspberry Pi 5 4GB | $60 | $85 | +$25 | | Raspberry Pi 5 8GB | $80 | $130 | +$50 | | Raspberry Pi 5 16GB | $205 | $305 | +$100 | | Raspberry Pi 500+ | $180 | $330 | +$150 | | Raspberry Pi 4 4GB | $55 | $80 | +$25 | | Raspberry Pi 4 3GB (NEW) | N/A | $83.75 | New SKU |

The 16GB Pi 5 has now risen over 70% from its original $120 MSRP. For context, the Pi 5 16GB cost $120 when it first shipped, went to $205 in early 2026, and now sits at $305.

New 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 at $45

To offset the price increases on higher-RAM models, Raspberry Pi launched a 1GB variant of the Pi 5. You get the same quad-core 2.4GHz Cortex-A76 processor, dual-band Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, dual 4Kp60 HDMI, PCIe 2.0, and USB 3.0 ports. The only difference is 1GB of LPDDR4X RAM.

This makes the 1GB Pi 5 a strong choice for headless IoT deployments, network appliances, and embedded controllers where RAM usage stays low. It is also the entry point for AI HAT+ 2 projects, since the accelerator has its own 8GB of dedicated memory and does not share the Pi's system RAM.

New 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 at $83.75

Alongside the Pi 5 changes, a 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 launched using a redesigned PCB with two 1.5GB LPDDR4 chips. This gives buyers a mid-range option between the 2GB ($45) and now-expensive 4GB ($80) Pi 4 models.

Firmware and OS Updates

Raspberry Pi OS is currently based on Debian 13 "Trixie" with the Linux 6.12.47 kernel. The desktop environment uses Labwc 0.9.4 as the default Wayland compositor, which replaced the older X11 stack.

Performance Gains from Firmware

The most recent firmware updates have produced measurable performance improvements without any hardware changes. Benchmarks show:

| Benchmark | Earlier Result | Current (April 2026) | Gain | |---|---|---|---| | Geekbench Single-Core | ~900 | ~944 | +44 points | | Geekbench Multi-Core | ~2,700 | ~2,877 | +177 points | | Clock Speed | 2.4 GHz (stock) | 2.4 GHz (stock) | Same |

These gains come from kernel-level optimizations, improved memory controller tuning, and better NUMA-aware scheduling. The Pi 5 was the first Raspberry Pi with a NUMA topology (the BCM2712 has asymmetric memory access patterns), and the kernel team has been refining how the scheduler handles this.

What Is Coming Next

The next Raspberry Pi OS release is codenamed "Forky." No release date has been announced, but it will likely include the Linux 6.13 or 6.14 kernel and continued Wayland improvements.

AI HAT+ 2: Generative AI on Pi 5

The AI HAT+ 2, released on January 15, 2026, is the most significant accessory for anyone doing AI work on a Raspberry Pi 5. Unlike the original AI HAT+ (which targeted computer vision with 13 or 26 TOPS), the AI HAT+ 2 is designed for generative AI workloads.

| Feature | AI HAT+ (Original) | AI HAT+ 2 | |---|---|---| | Accelerator | Hailo-8L / Hailo-8 | Hailo-10H | | Performance | 13 / 26 TOPS | 40 TOPS (INT4) | | On-Board RAM | None (shares system RAM) | 8 GB LPDDR4X | | Target Workloads | Vision, classification | Generative AI, LLMs, speech | | Supported Models | YOLO, MobileNet, ResNet | DeepSeek-R1-Distill 1.5B, Llama 3.2 1B, Qwen 2.5 | | Fine-Tuning | Limited | LoRA via Hailo Dataflow Compiler | | Price | $26 / $70 | $130 |

The dedicated 8GB of on-board RAM is the key differentiator. Generative models need memory for KV cache during inference, and sharing the Pi's system RAM (1 to 16GB) with the OS creates bottlenecks. The AI HAT+ 2 keeps model weights and inference state entirely on the accelerator board.

Running LLMs on Raspberry Pi 5

With the AI HAT+ 2, you can run 1B to 1.5B parameter models at interactive speeds. The supported models include:

• DeepSeek-R1-Distill 1.5B for reasoning tasks
• Llama 3.2 1B for general-purpose chat and text generation
• Qwen 2.5-Coder 1.5B for code completion
• Qwen 2.5-Instruct 1.5B for instruction following

For tasks that exceed what a 1.5B model can handle (complex code generation, multi-step reasoning, long document analysis), you can pair the local inference with API calls to larger cloud models like Claude. The Pi handles simple queries locally at zero marginal cost, and routes complex queries to the API.

Community and Education Updates

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has been active beyond hardware in April 2026:

• Experience AI expansion announced on March 26, targeting 24,000 educators and 1.25 million students
• Astro Pi 2025/2026 challenge cycle concluded, with community events supporting young coders across Europe
• Coolest Projects 2026 livestream scheduled for June 24, 2026
• The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2026 published with updated project guides

What This Means for Developers

The April 2026 updates create two distinct paths for Raspberry Pi 5 projects:

Budget-constrained builds: The new 1GB Pi 5 at $45 is ideal for headless deployments. Pair it with the AI HAT+ 2 ($130) for a $175 total AI edge device with 40 TOPS of dedicated inference capability. The AI HAT+ 2 has its own 8GB RAM, so the 1GB system memory is not a bottleneck for inference workloads.

High-end builds: If you need system RAM for desktop use, development, or running services alongside AI inference, the 8GB ($130) or 16GB ($305) models are still available but significantly more expensive than they were six months ago. Consider whether your workload actually needs system RAM beyond 4GB before paying the premium.

The firmware improvements are free performance. If you have not updated your Pi 5 firmware recently, run sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a to pull the latest version and reboot. The Geekbench gains (+44 SC, +177 MC) translate to real-world speedups in compilation, container startup, and model loading times.