The encryption is identical. Everything else is what you are paying for.
A free certificate and a four-hundred-dollar one produce the same TLS connection with the same ciphers. Anyone selling you on stronger encryption is selling something else. What money buys is identity validation, a warranty, a support contract, longer validity, and management tooling — all real, none cryptographic.
The default for public web TLS. Free, ACME-only, ninety days — which forces the automation you wanted anyway.
Useful as a second issuer and for teams that need a console rather than a script.
Free and invisible if the workload already runs in Google Cloud.
Where paid starts making sense: OV and EV validation, S/MIME and code signing, without DigiCert pricing.
Worth it when a vetted legal identity, a warranty and an escalation path are contractual requirements.
Choose free unless you can name the specific thing you are buying. "It feels more secure" is not one of them.
Describe the estate — roughly how many certificates, public or internal, and what has to be automated — and we’ll send back a shortlist with the reasoning. No vendor sees your details.