I never would have tried it if there wasn’t a free way I could.

When I first started playing Minecraft, I got it cracked. Yes, sure cracked launchers are against Mojang’s EULA, but they really don’t seem to care. Other launchers can be better than Mojang’s aka MultiMC is my go-to because it allows me to separate my modded from my semi-vanilla profiles. The ONLY difference is that the game runs in “offline mode” and doesn’t authenticate. Any cracked launcher downloads the offical libraries from mojang (look at console when it downloads a new version). TLauncher is a cracked launcher, which means you can get it for free, play single player, and “cracked” servers. The game costs about 30 dollars on their website, and about 10–20 dollars for minecraft pocket edition. Regardless if you’re on TL launcher or not, minecraft is not a free game. However, you can play with your friends by simply making them join the same world that you created, Simply give them the world seed and ask them to create a new world and enter the seed. It’s completely free when you use TLauncher but it doesn’t provide Mojang Authentication so you cannot play in SMPs SERVERs etc

Minecraft free tlauncher