The classic (which is to say, fancier, with the wooden collar) 8-cup model is $37 on Amazon right now. At our house, going to Chemex meant shifting from genuinely expensive drip machines that were hard or impossible to properly clean, and which therefore got replaced every few years. It's a drastically LESS expensive method than most.
When someone says "x is expensive", it's asserting that the item is a costly example of its genre. Given that drip coffee machines run from about $40 to hundreds and hundreds, it still seems disingenuous to say that Chemex is expensive.
Can you do pourover cheaper? Sure. But the good news is that in this area of coffeemaking, even the higher-end, beautiful option (the OG Chemex is literally in design museums) is pretty damn cheap.
I don't know, I feel like $37 for a glass container that still needs filters is asking for quite a lot. A nice french press is like $10.
For example, using the same coffee, I like french press coffee and hate chemex-style drip coffee. The latter brings out too much bitterness for my tastes.
But after doing a week long hiking trip I got pretty addicted to the simplicity and punch of the instant coffee method.
I even premix my Carnation instant coffee with a little cocoa powder and some sugar, so I can just do 1 spoon and I have an instant fun drink that tastes a little fancy.
I've had mine for > 10 years.