The obvious answer is “charge a reasonable price”.

Many services like AccuWeather do that, including having a limited free tier for experimentation or niche applications.

The real problem though is that the value of the data isn’t just the cost of storing and making it available - in many cases its strategic. This is why e.g. the Google Maps API gives you pre-rendered map tiles and curated results, but you don’t get access to the raw data.

Ads, like Reddit does and reddit makes a ton of money. If they weren’t trying to make nft integrations or new TikTok and just had the staff it took to keep the lights on, it would be a stable successful business.

But the greedy execs want more money so they act like they have no choice but to squeeze the users for everything they can. This is their choice, not a necessity.