i get wanting to make money, but if i don't get all the benefits of tooling until i start paying a ton of money...why benefit do i have by using this at all? especially when there are other avenues that are all free
What part of this that is crucial to your use isn't free? I personally think what they offer for free is quite good.
We're very aware that we need to balance our need to make money with the need to make Avalonia accessible for everyone. For this reason, for 12.0 we've made our VS Code extension totally free to use with no account needed and no usage restrictions.
Which one is competetive and running on all main system?
Avalonia is considered quite powerful from what Ive heard.