Yes, all these email services want you to pay up for them. I think this is the price tag for privacy.

I have switched to Mailbox org a couple of years ago. I had a freemail provider before that. Unfortunately, this providers’ data got leaked, and therefore I got pwned, luckily only resulting into a tsunami of spam. The entry-tier with Mailbox is 1 € per month (= 12 € per year) which is compareably cheap in my opinion. Of course, it depends on what features you desire - more features cost more money. They also offer a free trial for 30 days (but it is wise to start the free trial at the begin of a month, as far as I recall).

The process of switching the email provider took me at least 6 months, where both the old and the new email adress have to exist simulatiously.

If you need to register quickly to an online service, i can recomend Temp-Mail org. Its free, but you need to have the tab opened for the registration process, as all data (including the free temporary email adress) will be deleted. I used this service to register with my home instance, because back then I didn’t want to expose my real email adress.