How does it work, exactly? We just call this on-chain to get the latest price... but would our contract have to transfer some LINK to it, or what?
https://docs.chain.link/docs/get-the-latest-price
Which oracles are available, and what are their prices to call on-chain? All I am trying to do is find out onchain the "current" ETH-USD exchange rate, like a median across many exchanges or whatever. It doesn't have to be super exact, just not way off. What should I use for this?
No, they are not free. Each oracle service comes with a price. You can learn more about the services they offer and their prices from the following link.
For your specific search, you can go to this link.
If you like to learn more and prefer video, I suggest the following video.
Use of Chainlink oracles can be separated into 2 categories:
The answer to where or not they are free can be found in this stack exchange ETH question and answer.
TL;DR, at the moment they are free because the project is still starting, but it isn't economical for this to stay as-is forever.
This includes Chainlink VRF and Chainlink API calls. In order to use these, you need to send the specific oracle the LINK price of fetching the data.
