TL;DR: it’s our eighth birthday, and falling RAM prices have allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. You can buy one here.

Happy birthday to us

In two days’ time, it will be our eighth birthday (or our second, depending on your point of view). Many of you set your alarms and got up early on the morning of 29 February 2012, to order your Raspberry Pi from our newly minted licensee partners, RS Components and Premier Farnell. In the years since, we’ve sold over 30 million Raspberry Pi computers; we’ve seen our products used in an incredible range of applications all over the world (and occasionally off it); and we’ve found our own place in a community of makers, hobbyists, engineers and educators who are changing the world, one project, or one student, at a time.

The first Raspberry Pi

When we first started talking about Raspberry Pi 1 Model B back in 2011, we were very clear about what we were trying to build: a desktop Linux PC with interfacing capabilities for $35. At the time, it seemed obvious that our low price point would come with compromises. Even though you could use your Raspberry Pi 1 to watch HD video, or play Quake 3, or compile the Linux kernel, or automate a factory, some things – like browsing modern, JavaScript-heavy websites – were out of reach.

Improving performance

Every subsequent product – from quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 in 2015, to 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 in 2016, to Raspberry Pi 3+ in 2018 – whittled down those compromises a little further. By offering steadily increasing processing power at a time when the performance of traditional PCs had begun to stagnate, we were gradually able to catch up with typical PC use cases. With each generation, more people were able to use a Raspberry Pi as their daily-driver PC.

The Raspberry Pi I’d buy for my parents

Until, in June of last year, we launched Raspberry Pi 4. Roughly forty times faster than the original Raspberry Pi, for the first time we have a no-compromises PC for the majority of users. I’ve described Raspberry Pi 4 as “the Raspberry Pi I’d buy for my parents”, and since I bought them a Desktop Kit for Christmas they’ve found it to be basically indistinguishable in performance and functionality from other PCs.

In a sense, this was a “mission accomplished” moment. But Raspberry Pi 4 brought its own compromises: for the first time we couldn’t fit as much memory as we wanted into the base product. While the $35 1GB device makes a great media player, home server, or embedded controller, to get the best desktop experience you need at least 2GB of RAM. At launch this would have cost you $45.

Dropping the price of 2GB

Which brings us to today’s announcement. The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. Effective immediately, you will be able to buy a no-compromises desktop PC for the same price as Raspberry Pi 1 in 2012. In comparison to that original machine, we offer:

40× the CPU performance

8× the memory

10× the I/O bandwidth

4× the number of pixels on screen

Two screens instead of one

Dual-band wireless networking

And of course, thanks to inflation, $35 in 2012 is equivalent to nearly $40 today. So effectively you’re getting all these improvements, and a $5 price cut.

We’re going to keep working to make Raspberry Pi a better desktop computer. But this feels like a great place to be, eight years in. We hope you’ve enjoyed the first eight years of our journey as much as we have: here’s to another eight!

FAQs

Is this a permanent price cut?

Yes.

What about the 1GB product?

In line with our commitment to long-term support, the 1GB product will remain available to industrial and commercial customers, at a list price of $35. As there is no price advantage over the 2GB product, we expect most users to opt for the larger-memory variant.

What about the 4GB product?

The 4GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 will remain on sale, priced at $55.