I was just looking to buy a Raspberry Pi 5: the 8GB one is now 58% more expensive than last year; that's more than what I'm willing to pay.
Unless you specifically need a pi (unlikely) then they really are awful value now. Hard to really go out of the way to support them now they've stuck two fingers up at the solo/indie/educational community and gone all enterprise.
Second hand mini pc's are a good option. Half the price of a pi 5 + sd + power and you often get them with 16gb ram, a decent ssd, etc.
If you need GPIO then many of the rockchip boards are still fairly affordable and easily had.
Raspberry Pi hasn't been a cheap SBC for a long time. It's now in the same market segment as a NUC, but without the case and with worse price to performance.
Geez you just agro the x86 guys.
Have fun reading 40 answers about how discarded Lenovos from 2017 are cheaper and stay idle at 5W. It springs to 3x the power usage of a pi if they do anything with it but who cares about performance per Watt?
There were a couple alternatives for a few years. Wonder if they are a better value for money now. Beaglebone Black, Orange Pi, Jetson Orin Nano, etc.
The raspberry pis have been bad value for money for at least 4 or 5 years now unless you're really sensitive to the power draw. Once you add in a case and fan (required if you don't want it to overheat and screw the SD card), the charger, SD card it generally comes in at roughly the same price as more capable intel 1L PC like the Lenovo M920Q (though of course, they aren't new)