Raspberry Pi Zero: £4 computer has completely sold out, less than a day after it was released

About 20,000 of the tiny, cheap computers have already sold out — and copies of the magazine that gave it away free is selling for up to £50

The computer is smaller than a $5 banknote, which is all that is needed to buy it (Raspberry Pi)

The £4, tiny computer made by Raspberry Pi has completely sold out, less than 24 hours after it was released.

The little board — which packs in the same power as some recent laptops — was only release yesterday but has already sold out. That includes the magazines that were giving the little chip away for free.

Now copies of the magazine are selling on eBay for as much as £50. But the company is warning people from giving money to touts, instead assuring customers that they will make more of the little circuit boards.

Early Raspberry Pi computers sold for around $20-$25. But the company said yesterday that it was releasing an even cheaper version — which still packs in 512MB of Ram, a 1GHz processor and all the sockets that users are likely to need.

"You'd think we'd be used to it by now, but we're always amazed by the level of interest in new Raspberry Pi products," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, told WIRED.

"Right now it appears that we've sold every individual Zero we made (that's roughly 20,000 units) and most of the 10,000 MagPi issues with cover-mounted units; people are scouring the country for the last few Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury and Smiths branches that haven't sold out."

Mr Upton said that if there had been a “sour note”, it was the fact that some people were “taking advantage of the shortage” by selling the computers on eBay.

The foundation that makes the computers is running a special page on its site that will list all of the stockists of the new computers.

“Yesterday was a bit bananas, then,” the site reads. “We printed more copies of The MagPi 40 than usual and of course everyone and their dog AND their dog’s puppies wanted a copy.”

The publishers said that they would be “getting more stock in” and there are still “reports of issues out there in the wild”.

The publishers have asked that people who see copies of the magazine in shops to tweet them and make them aware, so that others can be told. They also encourage eager users to sign up to its newsletter, which will be used to tell people when the new computers are available.