There's no such thing as "completely free" when it comes to LLM usage. Everyone knows that. But there are two different tiers of tools now. The "free" ones that use API keys directly, and the premium ones like Windsurf that operate on their own credit system. So yes, "free" is a meaningfully useful distinction here, in that you incur no cost for the tool itself.
I mean there are definitely systems that let you hook up to a locally executed LLM, or an arbitrary cloud hosted one that you might either host yourself or pay for separately.
"Free" as in no "middleman accounts" or other nonsense. You pay the base token rate directly to Anthropic, and that's it.