A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM costs more than most people expect these days, and it still can’t transcode a 4K movie the way a ten-year-old Intel chip with Quick Sync can. That’s not a knock on the board. It’s a reminder that “runs on a Raspberry Pi” and “runs well on a Raspberry Pi” are two different claims, and homelab forums tend to blur them together. Here’s what a Pi actually handles without drama, what it technically runs but shouldn’t have to, and what to skip entirely.
Just getting started? Our homelab setup guide for beginners covers picking hardware more broadly, Raspberry Pi included.
Pi 4 or Pi 5, and what either one actually costs right now
Two Raspberry Pi generations are realistically worth buying today. The Raspberry Pi 4, still in production and rated to stay that way until at least January 2034 per Raspberry Pi’s own specifications, runs a quad-core Cortex-A72 at 1.8GHz with up to 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. The Raspberry Pi 5 replaces that chip with a quad-core Cortex-A76 at 2.4GHz, which Raspberry Pi’s own materials put at two to three times the CPU performance, adds a PCIe 2.0 lane for an NVMe SSD (through a separate HAT, it isn’t built in), and raises RAM options up to 16GB. Buying new for a homelab role, the Pi 5 is the one to get. The Pi 4 mostly makes sense if you already own one.
Pricing is where this gets messier than most guides admit. Raspberry Pi’s own December 2025 pricing announcement raised prices across the Pi 4 and 5 lineup to offset what it called an “unprecedented” rise in DRAM costs tied to AI data center demand, pushing the Pi 5 4GB from $60 to $70 and the 8GB from $80 to $95. That wasn’t the end of it: the board’s current listing on raspberrypi.com prices the 16GB model at $305, and an April 2026 product brief puts the 4GB variant around $110 and the 8GB around $175. Raspberry Pi has said the increases are meant to be temporary, tied to a memory shortage rather than a permanent repricing, but budget from current prices rather than an older guide, this one included.
| Raspberry Pi 4 | Raspberry Pi 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Quad-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.8GHz | Quad-core Cortex-A76 @ 2.4GHz |
| RAM options | 1/2/4/8GB LPDDR4 | 1/2/4/8/16GB LPDDR4X |
| Storage | microSD only | microSD, plus NVMe via a separate PCIe HAT |
| USB | 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 | 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 |
| Ethernet | Gigabit, no native PoE | Gigabit with PoE+ (needs a separate HAT) |
| Best fit today | Fine for anything covered below if you already own one | The one to buy new; more headroom for growth |
The constraints a spec sheet doesn’t show
None of the numbers above capture what actually limits a Raspberry Pi in a homelab. Neither board uses ECC memory, so silent bit-flips in RAM are a real, if rare, possibility, something ZFS-focused NAS platforms care about a lot more than a DNS ad blocker does. Networking tops out at Gigabit Ethernet on both boards; there’s no 2.5GbE option, which matters once file transfers or backup jobs get involved. A microSD card is still the default boot medium, and SD cards wear out under sustained writes in a way SSDs don’t. The Pi 5’s PCIe lane fixes this if you add a HAT and an NVMe drive, but that’s an extra purchase most first builds skip. And the VideoCore GPU in both chips decodes video acceptably but was never built to run the kind of real-time hardware transcoding a Plex or Jellyfin server leans on.
Power draw is the one place a Pi wins outright. It idles at a few watts, next to nothing compared to almost any x86 box, which is a big part of why it keeps showing up in always-on homelab roles despite everything above.
What actually runs well on a Raspberry Pi
The apps that fit a Raspberry Pi share a pattern: a single container, a modest RAM floor, and no GPU dependency.
- Pi-hole: its own documentation lists 512MB RAM and 2GB of storage as the minimum, and names a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W or any Pi 3, 4, or 5 as more than enough. About as close to the ideal Pi workload as this list gets.
- AdGuard Home does the same DNS-level ad blocking job with encrypted DNS built in, on roughly the same modest resources.
- Home Assistant‘s own install docs list a Pi 4 or 5 with at least 2GB RAM as the floor for Home Assistant OS. That’s enough for a working smart home; a long list of integrations and a Zigbee radio benefit from more headroom than the bare minimum, but the base install is genuinely light.
- Uptime Kuma runs as one container with an embedded SQLite database, and handles dozens of monitors at 20-second intervals without strain on hardware this size.
- Gitea‘s own system requirements page names a Raspberry Pi 3 as powerful enough for light workloads, and puts a small team’s install within reach of 2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM. Forgejo, its community fork, inherits the same footprint.
- Vaultwarden typically uses under 200MB of RAM as a single Rust binary, part of why its creator originally built it to run on a Raspberry Pi instead of official Bitwarden’s multi-container stack.
- qBittorrent spends most of its time waiting on network I/O rather than computing, so a Pi 4 handles a normal download queue without the processor becoming the bottleneck; disk speed and bandwidth are the real ceiling.
- OpenMediaVault deserves its own mention: it’s the only one of the three big NAS operating systems, TrueNAS, Unraid, and OMV, that ships dedicated Raspberry Pi images, with the omv-extras plugin repository already installed on them. A Pi with a couple of USB drives in mdadm RAID1 makes a genuinely usable small NAS with a real web interface behind it.
| App | Official minimum | Verdict on a Pi |
|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | 512MB RAM | Runs great, even on a Zero 2 W |
| AdGuard Home | Comparable to Pi-hole | Runs great |
| Uptime Kuma | No hard minimum published; SQLite-based | Runs great |
| Vaultwarden | Under 200MB RAM in practice | Runs great |
| Gitea / Forgejo | 2 CPU cores, 1GB RAM | Runs great; Pi 3 called sufficient |
| Home Assistant (OS) | 2GB RAM minimum | Runs well; plan more RAM for a large integration list |
| qBittorrent | No official minimum; CPU-light | Runs well; storage and bandwidth are the limit |
| OpenMediaVault | 1GB RAM, 4GB storage | Runs well as a light NAS; the only major NAS OS with Pi support |
What doesn’t run well, and why
Plex and Jellyfin are the two names that come up constantly, and both technically boot on a Raspberry Pi. What they can’t do is real-time hardware transcoding at any scale. Neither the Pi 4’s nor the Pi 5’s VideoCore GPU is built the way a modern Intel chip’s Quick Sync engine is; direct play of a file the client can already handle works fine, but the moment a device needs a resolution or codec change on the fly, a Pi struggles with even a single stream. If your library and client mix genuinely need transcoding, a mini PC with Quick Sync, the same hardware behind most budget transcoding builds, is a better foundation than a Pi will ever be. Our Jellyfin server setup guide covers picking hardware with that specific need in mind.
TrueNAS and Unraid don’t publish ARM builds at all, which is exactly why OpenMediaVault is the Pi-friendly option among the three major NAS platforms. Proxmox VE is the same story: the official project ships no ARM release. The ARM installs of Proxmox people run on a Pi today, community forks like PXVirt, aren’t the actual product, and they trail official Proxmox in features and support. This isn’t really about the Pi being underpowered so much as these platforms targeting x86-64 hardware specifically: ZFS performance in TrueNAS’s case, KVM virtualization in Proxmox’s.
Immich is the clearest example of a workload that’s simply the wrong shape for a Pi. Its own requirements page lists 6GB RAM as the minimum, 8GB recommended, and since version 3 the machine-learning container needs a CPU that supports the x86-64-v2 instruction set, something no ARM board, Raspberry Pi included, can offer. Immich’s own documentation says plainly that the stack can be too heavy for a Raspberry Pi. If photo backup with real face recognition is the goal, that workload belongs on a mini PC or a proper server, not a Pi.
Booting isn’t the same as running well. Most of what’s in this section will technically install and technically start; it just won’t hold up under any real load, and one of these (Immich’s ML container) won’t run on ARM hardware at all.
When a mini PC makes more sense
A mini PC is the honest alternative once a workload outgrows a Pi. An Intel N100-class box typically runs $150-300 new, sits at 5-15W idle, not far off a Pi’s power draw, and brings a real x86-64 CPU with Quick Sync hardware transcoding, more RAM headroom, and often an NVMe slot built in rather than bolted on through a HAT. If Plex, Immich, or a serious TrueNAS or Proxmox build is the actual goal, a mini PC gets there in one purchase instead of a Pi plus a HAT plus a compromise; the mini PC buying guide and what actually runs well on one cover picking hardware and setting expectations.
FAQ
What’s the first thing worth running on a Raspberry Pi?
Pi-hole or AdGuard Home. Both install in minutes, need almost no RAM, and give an immediate, visible result: ad and tracker requests disappearing across every device on the network, not just one browser.
Can a Raspberry Pi run Plex or Jellyfin at all?
It can install and play files a client can already handle without conversion. What it can’t do is real-time transcoding at any real scale, since neither the Pi 4 nor Pi 5’s GPU is built for it the way a Quick Sync-equipped Intel chip is.
Does a Raspberry Pi need a fan for homelab use?
Not for the light workloads covered here. Pi-hole, Uptime Kuma, or Vaultwarden barely load the CPU. Anything sustained and CPU-heavy benefits from at least a heatsink; Raspberry Pi’s own case for the Pi 5 ships with an integrated fan for exactly that reason.
Should I buy a Pi 4 or a Pi 5 in 2026?
The Pi 5 for anything new: it’s two to three times faster per Raspberry Pi’s own figures, adds a PCIe lane for real SSD storage, and supports more RAM. A Pi 4 is worth keeping if you already own one; it’s not worth buying used at a premium over a new Pi 5.
Is OpenMediaVault really the only NAS option for a Raspberry Pi?
Among the three most-recommended NAS operating systems, yes. TrueNAS and Unraid don’t publish ARM builds, so OpenMediaVault, which ships dedicated Raspberry Pi images, is the one with a real web GUI behind it on this hardware.
None of this makes a Raspberry Pi a lesser homelab machine, it just means picking the right job for it. DNS-level ad blocking, a status dashboard, a Git server for personal repos, a password vault, and a light NAS through OpenMediaVault are all a genuinely good fit, and the power bill barely notices. Transcoding, ZFS-based storage, real virtualization, and anything with heavy machine learning belong on x86-64 hardware instead. Our OpenMediaVault fiche covers running that NAS role on a Pi in more detail, and the homelab setup guide for beginners is the place to start if the rest of the stack still needs building.