Indeed, there is a massive gap between free and $1/month. Personally I outright refuse to buy anything digital involving monthly payments (except where there is no alternative like domain names, etc.)
I also pay for better AI. My - and probably your time - and the time saved by using superior tooling, is worth far more than the meagre few dollars spent each month on some subscription.
AI tooling that costs money does not provide anything better than the freely available tools. If you built some product upon it, I'm sorry but your product is not worth a dime.