Syncing playlists to your iPhone is easy peasy and it's forever music. No subscriptions, no gimmicks with copywriter restrictions on, well, number of devices to which you can copy...
That's not my experience. Everything in iTunes gets uploaded to Apple Music cloud, then to your phone. You cannot copy/paste anything in iTunes, direct from your PC to your iPhone music folder. That may have been a thing in early iTunes versions but that has been shut down. Without that Apple Music subscription you will lose access. In fact, Apple appears to have plans to ditch iTunes completely. The newest iTunes version appears to be only a player and transfers will either take place with the Apple Devices app or Apple Music. This is intended to force the Apple Music app onto your PC.