If you're looking for a Raspberry Pi, particularly a Pi 4 with 4GB, you may have to look harder than usual or prepare to wait. Due to the supply chain issues we've seen Various global reseller listings show that models of the Raspberry Pi 4 are going out of stock, and one site, Digi-Key, claims to have a 52-week "lead" time until it comes back in.
We checked Mouser, Adafruit, Micro Center and Seeed and they are all reporting no stock and no indication of when stock will arrive. UK resellers Pimoroni and The Pi Hut are showing limited stock. Pimoroni is currently only stocking the 2GB model.
However, there are at least two places that have a Pi 4GB in stock right now. Vilros has the 4GB model and all the other capacities at a limit of one per customer and The Pi Hut has both 2GB and 4GB in stock, with no posted limit.
We reached out to Pimoroni co-founder Paul Beech who confirmed that inline with Raspberry Pi's October blog post that "supply is in tight constraint right now." and that small batches of Raspberry Pi 4 were arriving at its Sheffield HQ.
Other models of Raspberry Pi, such as the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W are almost always out of stock, though Micro Center seems to have it right now. A mixture of high demand, low cost and limited manufacturing runs means that supplies are often snapped as soon as they go on sale. The Raspberry Pi 400, which sees a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB in a keyboard chassis seems to come off relatively unscathed, with stock levels appearing consistent, if a little constrained.
This news comes just a few months after Raspberry Pi Ltd CEO Eben Upton announced the Raspberry Pi's first ever price increase. The price increase saw the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB rise $10 to $45, and the return of the 1GB model to meet the important $35 price point which the Raspberry Pi has held since its launch in 2012. In 2021 Raspberry Pi produced 7 million units, similar to the number of units produced in 2020.
The range of Raspberry Pi boards, manufactured in South Wales at Sony's Pencoed facility have been reduced with older boards such as the Raspberry Pi 3 and older Compute Modules being produced in limited numbers for use in the industrial sector.
We're reached out to Raspberry Pi Ltd for an official response, and we shall update this story once we have it.
