Couchbase Capella offers a free tier product with an indefinite, no-cost environment to explore and experience the capabilities of its NoSQL database platform. The free tier provides perpetual access, comprehensive feature exploration, managed backend services, and allows users to immerse themselves in a robust, flexible, and scalable environment. Organizations may want to upgrade to a paid tier for additional features such as scalability, enhanced support, and service level agreements, but before doing so, they must complete specific prerequisites including creating an activation ID and configuring allowed IP addresses. The process of migrating from the free tier to a paid plan involves four steps: creating an archive repository, backing up data into the repository, restoring the backup into a paid plan cluster, and building indexes in the new cluster.