Raspberry Pi once ruled the maker world. That era is ending
For over a decade, the Raspberry Pi was the undisputed king of single-board computers. Hobbyists built retro arcades, smart mirrors, home servers, and robot brains on its compact green PCB. If you wanted to tinker, you bought a Pi. Simple.
Not anymore. The landscape has shifted dramatically. Today, a wave of powerful, well-priced alternatives has flooded the market. The Raspberry Pi isn’t irrelevant — far from it — but it’s no longer the automatic, obvious choice for every DIY project.
Let’s break down why the crown is slipping and which boards are stepping up.
Performance: The Pi 5 is good. The competition is better
When the Raspberry Pi 5 launched in late 2023, it was a genuine leap forward. Its quad-core Cortex-A76 processor, at 2.4GHz, brought desktop-like responsiveness to the Pi lineup. You could run a lightweight Linux desktop, browse the web with multiple tabs, and even play some older games.
But rivals didn’t stand still. The Orange Pi 5, powered by the Rockchip RK3588S, offers an octa-core CPU with four Cortex-A76 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. It also packs an Arm Mali-G610 GPU and up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The Pi 5 tops out at 8GB of LPDDR4X. That’s not a small gap — it’s a canyon.
Similarly, the Banana Pi M7 uses the same RK3588 chipset and delivers comparable muscle. For AI workloads, media transcoding, or running multiple virtual machines, these boards simply outgun the Pi 5.
Real-world benchmarks tell the story
In Geekbench 6 multi-core tests, the Orange Pi 5 scores roughly 2.5x higher than the Raspberry Pi 5. In GPU compute tasks, the Mali-G610 leaves the Pi’s VideoCore VII in the dust. If your project demands number-crunching — say, a local LLM or a home NAS with real-time transcoding — the Pi is no longer the best tool for the job.
RISC-V enters the ring: Milk-V and the open-source architecture
Perhaps the most fascinating challenger isn’t an Arm board at all. The Milk-V Mars runs on RISC-V, an open-standard instruction set architecture that’s gaining serious traction. It’s not as fast as the Pi 5 or the Orange Pi 5, but that’s not the point.
RISC-V offers something Arm and x86 cannot: complete freedom from licensing fees and proprietary cores. For developers who care about open hardware, or who want to future-proof their code for a post-Arm world, the Milk-V Mars is a compelling option. It’s also dirt cheap — the Mars CM starts at around $15.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has shown no public interest in RISC-V. That leaves the door wide open for Milk-V and others to capture the ideologically driven segment of the maker community.
Software and ecosystem: The Pi’s last real moat
Raspberry Pi’s greatest strength has always been its ecosystem. Raspberry Pi OS is polished, well-documented, and runs on millions of devices. The community forums are vast. Tutorials exist for practically every project imaginable. If you get stuck, someone has already solved your problem.
That’s a genuine advantage. Orange Pi and Banana Pi ship with third-party images of Armbian, Ubuntu, or Android. They work, but they lack the same level of polish and first-party support. You’ll spend more time tinkering with drivers and configuration files.
Still, the gap is narrowing. Armbian has matured into a stable, well-maintained distribution that supports dozens of SBCs. WhatsApp HD photo sending might not be relevant here, but the broader point is: software ecosystems evolve. The Pi’s lead is shrinking, not growing.
Price and availability: The Pi’s old Achilles’ heel
During the pandemic, Raspberry Pi boards were nearly impossible to find at retail price. Scalpers sold Pi 4s for double or triple MSRP. The Foundation blamed supply chain issues, but the damage was done. Many makers switched to alternatives out of necessity — and discovered they liked them.
Today, the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB model costs $60. The Orange Pi 5 8GB model is around $80. For $20 more, you get double the RAM and significantly more CPU and GPU performance. The Banana Pi M7 16GB version sells for about $100 — still reasonable for a board that can replace a low-end desktop.
If you’re on a tight budget, the Libre Computer Le Potato (based on the Amlogic S905X) costs just $35 and runs Armbian well. It’s slower than a Pi, but for headless servers or simple automation, it’s more than enough.
Which board should you buy in 2026?
There’s no single answer anymore. Your choice depends entirely on your project:
- For a retro gaming console: The Raspberry Pi 5 is still excellent. Emulation Station runs beautifully, and the community has pre-built images like RetroPie and Batocera.
- For a home media server or NAS: The Orange Pi 5 or Banana Pi M7, with their superior CPU and RAM, are better suited for Plex transcoding and Docker containers.
- For learning Linux or teaching kids to code: Stick with the Raspberry Pi. The documentation and community support are unmatched.
- For experimenting with RISC-V or open hardware: The Milk-V Mars is your entry point. Just be prepared for a rougher software experience.
- For AI and machine learning on the edge: Look at the Orange Pi 5 or the NVIDIA Jetson Nano. The Pi 5 lacks a neural processing unit.
The Raspberry Pi is still a great board. It’s reliable, well-supported, and easy to use. But it’s no longer the only option — or even the best option — for many projects. That’s not a failure. It’s a sign that the SBC market has matured. And for makers, more choice is always a good thing.
