103RE vs 401RE for Custom project

I am in designing phase of a project and I am looking various versions of STM32 family to find which one is better from technical and budget view.
It will be a small batch production of about 100 custom pcbs. My first pick is the STM32F103RE but as I can see the STM32F401RE is better and cheaper (103RE has 512KB/64KB vs 512KB/96KB of 401RE, 401RE is faster, 103RE is about 25% more expensive)
Both MCUs are OK for my requirements, many IOs, at least 3 UARTs, I2C, SPI. I already have a maple board with 103RE and a nucleo board with 401RE, and I can evaluate both MCUs. I know also, that arduino_STM32 is more mature for 103 but how bad is the F4 port? may be this is an opportunity to move this port forward.
What is your opinion about this dilemma?

I personally in love with the F405
Although F4xx core is behind F1xx, it still provide almost every thing I need, at least for now.

The latest prices that I can get for 100 pieces are (EU provider):
599 euro, for 103RE
450 euro, for 401RE and
859 euro, for 405RG
(and 864 euro!!!, for ATMega1281 or 650+350+20 for ATMega1280+external SRAM+Latch, if I want to stay in AVR world)
While the cost of MCU is lower than 6-8% of a complete system and nobody will get richer with 400 more or less euros, I need a good reason to select the main MCU for the system.

Last time I’ve ordered some F405RG on AliExpress, it was around US$28 for lot of 5, so lower than US$6/unit

The EU providers in many cases are more expensive than the eBay or Aliexpress but they have to pay taxes, customs, employees, get their profit and many more additional costs.
I think these suppliers count on their higher product quality but this is not 100% true.

On the other hand, the price difference is not small.
STM32F103RE
Your supplier: 599 euro 100pcs
eBay: 308 Euro 100pcs

I don’t know … the product quality is important if your project is commercial.

If you want to go down the GD route they are even cheaper. < US$3

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/GD32F103 … 32990.html

Maybe a bit experimental fo this project but the 40%+ increase in speed and the reduction in power cant be sniffed at

don’t underestimate how much flash and RAM you will eventually need. I suggest 2x what you foresee. STM32F40x or better, STM2F41x.
And of course, picking a package in which the necessary quantities of periperals are available AND can be pin-selected. This depends on choice of package pin count, e.g. 64 vs. 100, and higher. And wire up the BOOT0 pin with a pull-down,not hard grounded, and wire that to a jumper pin.

Thank you for your answers, but the most important is not 2-3 euro price difference.
The supply must be done from a store inside EU for accounting reasons, so, no Ebay, no Aliexpress, no American stores, probably I will choose tme.eu but it depends if they have available all other components, because I have to make one order if this is possible (the production will be done in Greece and we have some problems with payments due to capital controls)
From the technical view, I will choose a 64pin device like 103RE but if a better device is available for about the same cost why not to use it. For example 401RE seems to be a better device and it is cheaper, but is it? do I have to be aware of something? The 405RG also is a very good MCU, with much better specifications and huge memories but with extra cost. I can estimate that 128KB Flash/32 RAM will be OK for application, but I don’t have the experience with STM32 to be sure, so 256KB/64KB (2x as stevech suggested) will be 100% enough.
Another factor that I have to consider is the upgrade path, it will be nice to have upgrade option to bigger MCU in the same PCB. As I can see the F1 path is a bit limited as already the 103RE is almost the bigger 64pin device after 103RG (which is not very common)

Vassilis wrote:
<…>
I don’t know … the product quality is important if your project is commercial.

Finally, the decision is made…. STM32L476RE!!
Many Serial Ports, Low Power, good upgrade path and competitive pricing.
I hope what I will have no problems with it. (fingers crossed)

@Slammer
How much did you buy the STM32L476RE ?

440 euro for 100 pieces Vasilis… a bit cheaper than 401RE….

do you have a link to the information about the board, which you can post?

The board design is in very early stage of development, it is a design from scratch… (actually is my first real project with STM32).
In general, is a system for telemetry applications, there is the base board with MCU, a solar panel connection, battery, power supply, RTC ( I dont know if it is better to use the STM32’s internal RTC or to use an external RTC), two xbee sockets accepting various interface modules (wifi, zigbee, lora, sigfox, RS485, etc), some power regulation/charging components, a serial flash memory, separate analog power supply, etc….
The base board can accept on the top, daughter board through some pin headers. The daughter board actually is signal conditioning circuit for sensors. Various types of daughter boards (from very simple to more complex) can be available. For beginning a 4 channel AC current measurement daughter board is required.
Something similar but less powerfull, is the waspmote from https://www.cooking-hacks.com/shop/waspmote. Waspmote is based on Mega1284 and has some limitations not acceptable for my application (eg. a single UART is multiplexed for various peripherals, only 10bit ADC, limited memory, not powerful for onboard signal analysis)

Sorry Slammer

I got forgot you were designing the board and looking for cost effect supply of MCU’s