It can be free, but need community support.
well to get community support in an environment with 1400 coins of which 50% dont even have a website but are still listened at coinmarket cap, its not easy to start and develop a coin,
even if you are very serious and professional about it,
Well your asset needs to be on an exchange first though, don't you have a community that is interested and supportive of your initiative? Maybe you can write an open letter to CMC and ask them to list your coin? Give details about the project, how the community reacted etc etc and see what happens.. be creative.
communities are overburdened with to many existing coins, scams and media hypes, CMC doesnt help new projects actually, they even cant clean their own ladder of dead cryptocurrencies currencies or former scamcoins whose website disappeared with the investors funds, they are still traded and listed on coindmarket cap.
I am talking about over one bitcoin / half one, of course.