The placename Nieder Kostenz first cropped up in 1310 in the Sponheimisches Gefälleregister, a taxation register kept by the County of Sponheim.

Over the years, various spellings of the name appear on the historical record:[3] When Nieder Kostenz actually arose and when the first settlers came are things that nobody can answer with any certainty.

A great many archaeological finds in the area, however, grave goods such as bronze rings and belt plaques, iron lance heads, iron combat knives and coins from Roman Emperor Vespasian’s time, bear witness to Celtic-Roman settlement in the area.

Julius Caesar’s writings identify the Hunsrück and neighbouring regions as the realm of the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived.

Nieder Kostenz’s current site was in Caesar’s time part of the Imperial province of Germania Superior.

On 24 August 1707, the “Further” County was sundered in a treaty between Electoral Palatinate and Baden-Baden, and in 1771, the Margraves’ share passed to Baden.

In the Thirty Years' War, first the Spaniards, and then later the Swedes plundered and starved the region around Nieder Kostenz.

King Louis XIV's French troops occupied the Palatinate and the Hunsrück in 1673, resulting in further plundering and laying waste.

The municipality, though, did not want to forsake the rights that it had won in the 17th century, as witnessed by two suits recorded in court documents in the Koblenz State Archives.

In Dillendorf’s and Nieder Kostenz's submission in the case against the Prussian government, Dillendorf wanted to prove to the government that it had held grazing rights in the Dillwald (forest, now called the Brauschied) since the 17th century, and that it had the right to burn forest and use woodlands for haymaking.

This, however, meant that greater capital had to be sunk into the endeavour, something that many poorer families, and those with many children, simply could not manage.

Meanwhile, agents were trying to get people to settle in South America, especially in Brazil, which was willing to make available to any settler 70 to 80 ha of land, which was quite an inducement.

Many young couples who had nothing to their name but their willingness to work felt forced to leave the Hunsrück forever and emigrate, either to South America or to the industrial centres, to seek the livelihood that eluded them at home.

The old pastoral economy, in which livestock was tended by herdsmen in the forest and on the heath, came to an end sometime around the turn of the 20th century.

As in many villages in the Hunsrück, an “Emperor’s Oak” was planted in Nieder Kostenz on Kaiser Wilhelm I's one hundredth birthday, 22 March 1897 (he had been dead for nine years by this time).

The state required all agricultural produce to be handed over, but for the minimum needed for a farming family's personal consumption.

In 1916, though, the potato harvest was bad because of late blight (the same disease that caused the Great Famine of Ireland).

When the western front collapsed and the war had been lost in 1918, Nieder Kostenz had to host German troops many times during their retreat.

Despite the rampant inflation in Germany in 1923, the year brought one good thing to Nieder Kostenz: electricity.

Since several local riverbeds and some farm lanes were being cobbled, there was a great demand for quarrystone, and the quarries yielded high-quality stone.

In late November 1939, troops were quartered in Nieder Kostenz; a logistics unit from Hamburg wintered in the village.

In the first winter of the war, a farming family from the Saarland was lodged in Nieder Kostenz after having to be evacuated from just behind the Siegfried Line.

In the war's dying days, an American fighter was shot down by German Flak; it crashed in the Brauschied (wood).

When the Americans were advancing from the Moselle over the Hunsrück in March 1945, Nieder Kostenz was spared the throngs that beset some nearby places.

Also coming to Nieder Kostenz were people who had lost their homes to either aerial bombing of cities during the war or deportation in the wake of the Potsdam Agreement.

[14] The German blazon reads: In gespaltenem Schild vorne das blau goldene Schach, hinten in Silber unter einem blauen schrägliegenden Wellenbalken ein schwarzes Wasserrad.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Per pale chequy of ten azure and Or and argent a bend sinister wavy enhanced, the end towards chief abased, of the first, below which a waterwheel spoked of eight sable.

The “chequy” pattern on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side recalls the “Further” County of Sponheim, whose counts were between 1248 and 1437 Nieder Kostenz's lords and landholders.

The charges on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side represent the Kyrbach, the local brook, in the case of the bend sinister wavy, and the village's three old mills, in the case of the waterwheel; these mills are the once Sponheim-owned Eichenmühle, mentioned as early as 1438, the Bastenmühle (or Schlemmersmühle) and the Minnigsmühle (or Ulrichsmühle).

[15] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[16] Nieder Kostenz was a stop on the now disused Hunsrückquerbahn between Langenlonsheim and Hermeskeil.