8 years ago I bought a house. My monthly rent was 1300 and mortgage/escrow/repair savings were instead 2000. Rent went up $100-$200 a year.
My son is looking for rentals in our same community and the equivalent rental to what I had is now around $3000.
Even ignoring appreciation, in the long term there was a cash flow savings.
Not free, but this was one of my favorite things when learning to program. https://everybasic.info/lib/exe/fetch.php/basics/vbdos-3.png Visual Basic for DOS.