Why aren’t free extensions over-represented in the results?

They are represented — just not over-weighted. The database includes free options in nearly every category: native Adobe Commerce modules (B2B Companies, Live Search, Page Builder, Catalog Subscriptions), free open-source modules (mage2kishan’s AdvancedSeo / Hreflang / ImageSeo, M2E Pro free tier, Hyvä Blocks), and free SaaS tiers (Cloudflare Free, Cookiebot Free, Algolia Free).

What you won’t see is a long-tail of unmaintained free GitHub modules from anonymous authors. The reasons:

• Maintenance risk — a free module abandoned by its author is one Magento minor away from breaking your store. Replacement cost (rip-out + re-implement) is 2-5x what a maintained paid module would have cost.
• Security exposure — unmaintained modules don’t get security patches. A single XSS in a free module that’s untouched since 2021 is the sort of thing that sinks a store.
• Hidden cost > license fee — the dev hours to integrate, theme-override, debug, and maintain a half-baked free module routinely outweigh the license fee of a maintained alternative.

If a free module is genuinely best-in-class for your use case (and several are — native Adobe Commerce modules in particular), the recommender will show it first. The ranking just doesn’t default to “cheapest = best.”