This is not about paying for a tool. This USD 99 is a tax paid to Apple to be allowed to distribute the software you wrote, regardless of which tool you used to

This is not about paying for a tool. This USD 99 is a tax paid to Apple to be allowed to distribute the software you wrote, regardless of which tool you used to write it. It could be written with a free tool, it could be written with an expensive tool, it doesn't matter; everyone who wants to distribute software to run on macOS has to pay that tax.