This review highlights the significance of cost for various adsorbents in their wastewater treatment using an adsorption process. Industrial wastewater discharge containing dye and heavy metal ions has been one of the major contributor to environmental pollution. Adsorption process has been regarded as one of the effective method for the treatment of wastewater due to its low cost, accessibility, simplicity, and higher efficiency in the removal of contaminants as compared to several other treatment processes. So far, limited literature has thoroughly discussed the life cycle assessment of different PNCs to cover their feasibility in industrial wastewater treatment. This paper compare various adsorbents on multiple parameters and outlines their economic feasibility for the treatment of wastewater. Moreover, a section is devoted to the quantitative analysis of cost for different PNCs and has summarized discussion on the cost behavior at each regeneration cycle. The analysis presented in the paper will help the reader to identify those feasible adsorbents that could potentially fetch the best possible return on investment (ROI). It might prove to be a landmark study for future work wherein including socio-economic and environmental feasibility will recognize a novel and sustainable PNCs. Thus it might open a new demand of study as well as a test for justification of claimed novelty of work.