How do you think this works in case of HIBP?
There's 13bn leaked accounts on the site, and although Hunt does appear to run the site entirely selflessly with little/no profit motive, there is at least some commercialisation of the accounts listed bringing in revenues to cover its costs.
It's free for us because somewhere in the chain, someone is paying for data about us - even if their use-case isn't nefarious.
It's not free unless you just have one email.