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RAM price tracking 2026 — lowest price on DDR5 and DDR4 memory of all capacities

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Check the best prices on DDR5 and DDR4 memory kits.

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RAM Price Index by Series

Lowest pricing

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1. Cheapest DDR5
2. Cheapest DDR4

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

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12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Arkitekt78
    The year is 2026, and we are not able to quickly produce a piece of technology that, at its core, had been around for many, many decades.

    THAT is why I'm calling shenanigans. This is 100% price fixing and artificially inflating demand.
    Reply
  • Hotrod2go
    What a scam this market is now, its like this hardware, especially DDR5 has appreciated in value more than spot gold price since DDR5 came to desktop PCs!
    Reply
  • WebBeachBoy
    Well - I can tell you that here in Europe RAM prices have hit the floor. (e.g. DDR4 4GB modules for €1, 8GB for €5 )
    Reply
  • TridentForU
    Acting like this is AIs fault is wild. This is stuff we have been perfecting for over 3 decades. The manufacturers swapped consumer to enterprise lines because we don't have enough production.

    We have known years in advance this production shortage was coming. AI is overall a very small volume of the memory required in the enterprise space, even counting VRAM.

    You are deluding yourself if you think this is the fault of a single technology. This is the fault of manufacturers wanting more money.
    Reply
  • timsSOFTWARE
    TridentForU said:
    Acting like this is AIs fault is wild. This is stuff we have been perfecting for over 3 decades. The manufacturers swapped consumer to enterprise lines because we don't have enough production.

    We have known years in advance this production shortage was coming. AI is overall a very small volume of the memory required in the enterprise space, even counting VRAM.

    You are deluding yourself if you think this is the fault of a single technology. This is the fault of manufacturers wanting more money.
    AI is especially memory-hungry. It can make use of terabytes if you have it. So with new memory fabs taking the better part of a decade to go from planning stages to up and running, it does make sense that perhaps the industry was not properly positioned for it - even if they might have known it was coming for a few years.

    When memory wasn't so expensive, I always liked to have more than most people might think was needed in my PCs, and I thought I had enough, but I could use a terabyte or more of RAM for AI if I had it.
    Reply
  • Kindaian
    Long time ago, i took the bet and made my PC with 64GB of ram. The only thing i regret now is not having done it with 128GB...

    But I'm fine... for the next 5 years at least.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    These prices are bad, but my first 32GB kit of 4800c40 cost me over $300 in Dec 2021. And I was one of the lucky few to score a retail purchase. Prices and availability have been worse.

    And Yes, I blame AI. The first time was due to a PMIC shortage from the supply chain still being messed up post covid. This time is a silicon wide supply shortage from the unprecedented consumption from the buildout of the AI industry. If AI had a reasonable buildout these shortages and high prices would not exist.

    Not that I need any ram, I picked up a 32GB 8000c40 kit last year for $125, but this AI has about as much effect on my life as raytracing in games has. And raytracing in games has very little effect on my life because I don't use it much. Like AI when it pops up first in a search, I just scroll past it. It would be nice to have an AI blocker but big tech is being especially tricky about sneaking it in everywhere and it would probably take AI to do. It is a shame that AI is raising costs for many, just as a side effect of it being built up already.
    Reply
  • User of Computers
    Arkitekt78 said:
    The year is 2026, and we are not able to quickly produce a piece of technology that, at its core, had been around for many, many decades.

    THAT is why I'm calling shenanigans. This is 100% price fixing and artificially inflating demand.
    ...what? Capacity to produce a product is in no way a function of how long said technology has been around, instead being a function of how much capacity exists to produce the product. Also, this "core technology" (the advanced HBM and DDR5 RDIMMS that servers use) has only been around since the early 20s and maybe the late 10s if you want to stretch.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Arkitekt78 said:
    The year is 2026, and we are not able to quickly produce a piece of technology that, at its core, had been around for many, many decades.
    Hotrod2go said:
    What a scam this market is now, its like this hardware, especially DDR5 has appreciated in value more than spot gold price since DDR5 came to desktop PCs!
    TridentForU said:
    Acting like this is AIs fault is wild. This is stuff we have been perfecting for over 3 decades. The manufacturers swapped consumer to enterprise lines because we don't have enough production.
    I don't really think DDR5 has been around for many decades but that's less of my question.

    My question revolves around the fact that DRAM prices seem to have plateaued and in some cases are now falling, if albeit slowly.

    Are we allowed to include price reductions in this conspiracy theory? Or is that excluded? Why would it be excluded, I'm very, very curious as to the why.
    Reply
  • Geef
    If someone made an offline version of AI I'd be all in. Hot AI hologram chick here we come!
    I just don't like the idea of it remembering/tracking every single thing I do.
    Reply