When does a finance app go from “interesting” to “worth paying for”?

I'm a complete beginner in the stock market, and there's something I keep going back and forth on.

I've tried a bunch of finance apps that look useful in theory. But "useful" and "worth paying for every month" feel like two completely different things. I've tried several apps like LevelFields, StockNews AI and Finviz. Even at around $35 a month, I still don't see what makes them special. Most of them have very similar designs and features: portfolio views, alerts, planning tools, summaries. I get why people try them. What I don't get is what actually crosses the line into paid value.

And now more and more AI finance apps are popping up. But as a beginner, I can't really judge their "deep insights" because I barely know the industry or the companies they're talking about.

A friend told me that he doesn't pay for information, he pays for clarity of the content; or maybe the story just sounds right.

But then he built his own trading agent. He bought a real time news API called TradingNews. Since he built the agent himself, he controls the logic completely. And this tool only costs half of what he used to pay.

But honestly, I'm not even sure that's true. Or maybe it's just something people tell themselves.
So I'm curious. What do you guys think about this?
What actually makes a finance product feel subscription-worthy, instead of just… mildly interesting?