It’s worth paying for a service, you have to stay ahead and every once in a while, they crackdown on the working methods. Good providers try to stay ahead.
Though it did seem that x-ray with vless worked and still works, I still didn’t mess with it and trying to keep it up myself. There’s a lot of stuff that’s more worth your time than a cat and mouse game that others can play for you for a small fee.
That is unless you’re interested in networking and learning or developing it.
There are two protocol I suggest either ShadowSocksR or VMESS (V2RAY) I am using it like for three years they are the best way. If you want to build your own I have a repo in github check them out https://www.github.com/samrand96