If you visit the Raspberry Pi web site you see the tagline “An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!” which is, when it comes down to it, rather untrue.

Let’s check the numbers with my recent Raspberry Pi order from RS (the previous order from element14 was not much of a difference), a Raspberry Pi Model B, alas the only one available at the moment:

The device itself cost 27.40€ (which itself is about $35 and consistent with the pricing on the web site). Now wait, there is shipping, which amounts to 6.28€ from the UK to Germany. Wait, that was not all! To my surprise the base price was without VAT, so add another 5.48€ to it. So we are at 39.16€ ($50 dollars).

And what we got is a brick, because it does nothing at the moment and can’t even boot. So we need an SD card, I paid 7.68€ for a good 8GB SD card. You can go a bit cheaper but you are around the 5€ mark anyway. So now it boots… actually it doesn’t, since it needs a power supply. You could use your USB smartphone charger but then you’d have to chose between using the RPi and charging the phone. Not really an option. So you need a charger which is about 6€. I did it better and bought a powered hub where I can plug the Raspberry Pi in, too. 7 port powered USB hub was 15.47€ and if you want to plug in the Pi you need to get a microUSB cable, 1.59€.

Now the Raspberry Pi could boot… you just don’t see anything because it needs either a video cable or an HDMI cable. With previous bad experence with cheapo HDMI cables, I went with a solid mid-range Amazon basics cable, 5.99€.

As you got all these things, you realize that the Raspberry Pi is just a board lacking a case. I ordered a plastic case for 9.99€ off ebay, which is again, a mid-range price for cases.

But depending on your situation, you might still need something like a screen, a keyboard or a mouse. I had all of these available, so no problem, but consider these too.

My overall sum is 79.88€ ($102) which is four times as much as the Raspberry Pi tagline says. I understand the Rasperry Pi foundation that the low price was an important reason for wide attention, but now that they have the attention, they should be a bit more honest about the price.