rpilocator shuts down in July: goodbye to the site that found Raspberry Pis in stock
In recent hours, André Costa announced on Bluesky that rpilocator.com will stop showing availability and prices for Raspberry Pi in July 2026. The site, which became a reference point for finding a board in stock at retailers around the world during the chip shortage of 2021-2022, is closing its doors, at least for now.
Decisions, decisions. Hosting company I use for @rpilocator.com is shutting down. I could spend time migrating it to another provider or shut rpilocator down. It has served a purpose during the shortage and I don't know if it is still useful — André (makerbymistake) (@makerbymistake.com)
January 27, 2025, 20:35
The reason seems to be purely technical, but at the same time tells a broader story. The bot that indexed the catalogs of stores is now being blocked by almost all shopping sites, likely as a side effect of anti-scraping measures designed against the automated systems that feed AI models. Alternative solutions to bypass the blocks lasted a few days or weeks at most, and keeping them updated had become a continuous and unsustainable effort.
From emergency to niche item
rpilocator was born when Raspberry Pis were almost impossible to find at retail prices and disappeared from retailers in a matter of minutes. Costa put it together in a few days for personal use, made it public after verifying that the idea worked, and managed to procure a Pi Zero 2 W within two days of activating the monitoring. One detail says it all about the spirit of the project: the site is physically hosted on a Raspberry Pi.
Since then, the context has changed: the availability of boards today is quite broad, the problem has become the price. Memory costs continue to rise, turning small hobbyist boards into almost luxury items, a reversed scenario compared to what made a tool like rpilocator necessary.
Despite everything, the user base has not disappeared: the site still counts about 11,000 monthly users and Costa continues to receive emails from real people reporting small operational issues. The closure may not be definitive, as the same author does not rule out a return in the future, though without any certainty.