You’re not wrong at all imho, in fact you’re spot on. As soon as Trading212 pivoted to commission free investing in circa 2020, they ate Freetrade’s lunch in the UK by executing much better and faster than them.
Freetrade would be in a much better position if Trading212 didn’t exist or just stuck to the CFD space they were in. Once they crossed over into real stocks&shares, they took away Freetrade’s impending Robinhood-like growth trajectory in the UK.
Freetrade had no choice but to pivot to “higher quality” customers with >£10k balances who can afford to pay a subscription free but they’ve even done poorly at that having less than 50k of them.