Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a comprehensive financial estimate that encompasses all direct and indirect costs associated with deploying and operating a software solution over its entire lifecycle, extending beyond initial licensing or subscription fees to include infrastructure, operations, maintenance, and support. In the context of NoSQL databases, TCO includes expenses related to hardware or cloud resources, scaling, data storage, backups, and necessary personnel, with additional considerations for performance tuning, replication, and integration that can significantly impact ongoing costs. Understanding TCO allows organizations to make more informed decisions by considering the full financial impact of their technology choices, ensuring that they select solutions that balance performance needs with sustainable cost efficiency. This holistic approach helps avoid underestimating long-term expenses and ensures decisions align with both performance and budgetary requirements, especially given the added complexity of NoSQL systems. Comparing managed services like Couchbase Capella with self-hosted options illustrates how operational burdens and risk exposures vary, emphasizing the importance of TCO analysis in selecting a solution that offers the right balance of scalability, resilience, and cost-effectiveness.