[irgeek]

Certificates issued from AWS Certificate Manager are — and, I believe, always have been — free. AWS is definitely not rent-seeking on certificates.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Certificates from AWS Certificate Manager are part of the roach motel though - AWS orchestrates the issuance and holds the private keys so you can only use them via AWS services.

[Deathmax]

But that's what the grandparent was complaining about though? If you're not using the provider's managed services, then nothing is stopping you from running your own ACME client to provision certificates without paying the cloud provider money for certs.