Generally no.
A few larger companies do.

Mastodon doesn’t have Likes at all.

The star you’re referring to is Favorite. Those go into your Favorite list. So you can refer back to them more easily.

Not sure where you are, but there’s practically no place in the US you get a lunch for that. In flat terms it’s quite cheep. It’s only expensive relative to free.

And when you think about it, your search service really is your internet. It shapes your whole internet experience. If that’s not worth $5/month to make sure it’s good and not polluted with ads, I don’t know what to tell you.