"Banana Pi" is a brand, not a platform. The boards use chips from MediaTek, Allwinner, Amlogic, Rockchip and SpacemiT, and kernel support, OS images and GPIO libraries all follow the chip. Group a board by its SoC before comparing it with anything else.
Router boards (BPI-R) and the OpenWrt One: MediaTek Filogic
| Board | SoC (as listed in Banana Pi's docs) |
|---|---|
| BPI-R4 Pro, BPI-R4 | MediaTek MT7988 (Filogic 880) |
| BPI-R4 Lite, BPI-R4 Mini | MediaTek MT7987 (Filogic 860) |
| BPI-R3, BPI-R3 Mini | MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) |
| OpenWrt One | MediaTek MT7981 (Filogic 820) |
| BPI-R2 | MediaTek MT7623N |
These are network boards: SFP cages, 2.5G/10G ports, Wi-Fi, OpenWrt. The BPI-R3 and BPI-R4 have only a 26-pin GPIO header; they aren't meant as desktop or camera boards.
General-purpose boards (BPI-M, BPI-P)
| SoC | Boards listed in Banana Pi's docs |
|---|---|
| Rockchip RK3588 | BPI-M7 (covered in the Raspberry Pi alternatives overview) |
| Amlogic S905X3 | BPI-M5 (Raspberry Pi 4B size), BPI-M2 Pro |
| Allwinner H618 | BPI-M4 Berry (Raspberry Pi 4B size), BPI-M4 Zero (Raspberry Pi Zero W size) |
| Allwinner A40i | BPI-M2 Berry, BPI-M2 Ultra, BPI-6202 (industrial control gateway) |
| Allwinner H3 | BPI-M2+, BPI-M2 Zero, BPI-P2 Zero (for IoT) |
RISC-V (BPI-F)
The BPI-F3 and the BPI-CM6 compute module use the SpacemiT K1, an octa-core 64-bit RISC-V chip.
How to use this
- Searching for help? Search by SoC ("MT7986 OpenWrt", "H618 Armbian"): boards with the same chip share kernels and fixes.
- Old chips (H3, A40i, MT7623N) mean old designs: check that current OS images exist before buying.
- The same product name can hide different hardware variants (RAM, eMMC size, Wi-Fi module). Read the model table on the board's docs page.