diff --git a/src/documents/tests/test_api_objects.py b/src/documents/tests/test_api_objects.py
index 0cdf20dc2..56a2829b2 100644
--- a/src/documents/tests/test_api_objects.py
+++ b/src/documents/tests/test_api_objects.py
@@ -840,7 +840,7 @@ class TestBulkEditObjects(APITestCase):
             "change": {"users": [self.user1.id], "groups": [group1.id]},
         }
 
-        def run_with_n_tags(n: int) -> int:
+        def run_with_n_tags(n: int, *, capture: bool = True) -> int | None:
             tags = [Tag.objects.create(name=f"perm-tag-{n}-{i}") for i in range(n)]
             with CaptureQueriesContext(connection) as ctx:
                 response = self.client.post(
@@ -860,7 +860,13 @@ class TestBulkEditObjects(APITestCase):
             for tag in tags:
                 self.assertEqual(get_users_with_perms(tag).count(), 2)
                 self.assertEqual(get_groups_with_perms(tag).count(), 1)
-            return len(ctx.captured_queries)
+            return len(ctx.captured_queries) if capture else None
+
+        # Warm up any one-time, process/instance-cached lookups (e.g. Django's
+        # ContentType cache) on the same code path before measuring, so the
+        # comparison below isn't skewed by whichever of the two calls happens
+        # to pay a cold-cache cost that has nothing to do with tag count.
+        run_with_n_tags(1, capture=False)
 
         small_batch_queries = run_with_n_tags(5)
         large_batch_queries = run_with_n_tags(50)