This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volunteering in DIY heritage institutions focused on the collection, preservation and curation of popular music’s past. While the rewards of serious leisure have been analysed extensively in the literature, costs are addressed less frequently. Moreover, Stebbins’ framing of costs has been critiqued as ambiguous and underdeveloped. In this article, we draw on Stebbins’ tripartite model of tensions, dislikes and disappointments to analyse costs that emerged from ethnographic interviews undertaken with volunteers in 13 DIY popular music heritage institutions. Types of costs included tensions that were interpersonal, relational, financial, temporal (work, family, leisure), and related to well-being (emotional, physical); dislikes centred on shortages of dependable volunteers, volunteers who demonstrate a ‘lack of care’, and ineffective leadership; and disappointments focused on being let down by others, unsuccessful funding applications, and organisational change. Although rewards outweigh costs, we find that recognising the costs involved for career volunteers in DIY heritage institutions is crucial for contextualising rewards and perseverance, as well as for understanding how different types of costs overlap and exacerbate one another.