Open Science doesn’t need to cost a lot (of money) and should generally be free of charge for individual users. If you are faced with paying a charge, there are ways to obtain financial support. Practicing Open Science often requires more time and organisational effort, especially in the initial phase when you are still familiarising yourself with it. For example, you will need to create and implement data management plans. However, these can be financed through applications for third-party funding. On the other hand, the benefits are also greater, as you can reap the advantages of Open Science by making your research more visible and improving its quality. In addition, Open Science also helps to reduce costs by making research more efficient and avoiding duplication of work.

In general, a distinction can be made between the costs of operating Open Science services and the costs of using them. Many services are free of charge for individual researchers, if one disregards the sometimes high Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access publications in journals or, for example, as monographs. However, funding opportunities are often available, either through the relevant publication funds of one's own university and/or research institution or directly from the funding institutions. All in all, there are many opportunities to publish in Open Access that do not require financial contributions.

Nevertheless, costs are incurred for the development and operation of Open Science services. Funding is often available for the initial setup of services and infrastructure. Either the running costs are financed by an organisation – for example, the ZBW operates EconStor and CERN operates Zenodo – or the costs must be covered in other ways.

For some non-commercial tools there are also institutional memberships, such as with ORCID. Research institutions then receive access to the API and can add publication entries for the researchers.

In addition, there are publishers and/or commercial providers that offer both free and paid services.