They call it free because you borrowed it for almost free. It's like if I rented you a car for no money, you'd have no problem saying "I got this rental car for free!" You still have to give back the car / pay back the loan, but you got to use that car/money during the rental/loan period.

You can shop around for a better rate. A quick look at Investopedia shows Citi, Capital One, and a few others with interest rates above 3%.

Of course, you have to judge if you actually have enough money in the bank where the difference between 0.05% and 3.00% is worth the hassle of moving the account over. But there are definitely options much better than the rock-bottom interest rates we've been stuck with the past decade and a half.

It actually started to feel like free money was the natural state of the world for a decade or so there. Younger people (less than 35 or so), probably really don't have perspective on how national economies "normally" function without extreme measures like Quantitative Easing happening in the background. Stonks don't always go up.