It's expensive because the license needs to be bought for some time period. It's not pay as you go. So there is a bit big investment for every contracting period.

Go with a subscription, or rent it for a short term. You have a maximum of one- to one and a half-year projects.

Note that TDM licenses will limit the usage of the PowerCenter ETL tool to data masking, data subset, and test data generation.

 It's not possible to use the product for other purposes, e.g., data warehousing.

Go with the PowerCenter standard edition, unless you need business glossary and metadata management capabilities (full data lineage, impact analysis). Those are part of the advanced edition.

I am not aware of the pricing of this product.

I don’t have such information. Generally speaking, with Informatica you have to be extremely careful of what are you buying because sometimes the licensing model is a bit tricky.

It is an excellent product. It is easily maintainable and flexible. The pricing and licensing policy depends upon the budget and compliance needs for the project.