Been using Nord for a couple years, before that HideMyAss.
Seems to be working ok.
Only a fool would use a Free VPN.
IpVanish is not free. I agree, free VPN’s are data collection and resale operations. Make you marginally more secure doing transactions but privacy... LOL. I want what you are smoking if you think it is actually free and they are not selling all your activity.
Nord is expensive and I have no clue about log retention. HMA I don’t know about but they are smaller but I assume don’t keep logs.