You pay nothing to get them, every free money in crypto is called AIRDROP.
Why do you think Airdrop is free money? I don’t really think so because you will have to perform some tasks before you will be able to receive the airdrop, the time and effort spent in performing those tasks is something, so the reward you are getting is not free.
Yes they're Free money and not all airdrop required you to do tasks, Apes NFT holders were airdrop Ape tokens just for hodling pieces of their Nft and there are many more projects/exchanges that airdropped their customers in the past without tasks.
I don't consider airdrops to be free money because you spend data, time and energy mining these projects daily, not all requires you to do stressful tasks just like you said
I agree to that, but daily check-ins must be done, if you invest those time you spend in doing all that in other things you will definitely achieve something. Besides 80 percent of airdrops requires a certain amount of gas fee to claim what you have, so I don't think they are free in any way