Help: Infura free tier throws 429 Rate Limit errors on every contract deploy

I've hit a wall with Infura's free tier lately.

• The error is consistent: "429 Rate Limit Exceeded" whenever my scripts hit the endpoint at https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/<api‑key>.
• Using ethers.js v6.5.0, my deploy txs fail with ProviderError: infura RPC error: 429.
• Even after spacing requests by 5 seconds, Infura still throttles me; logs show at ~10‑15 reqs/min.
• This directly impacts my ability to test new ERC‑721 logic on the go‑chain: I’m stuck waiting 30+ minutes before each deploy attempt.
• The documentation mentions "limit is 100 rps for free tier" but the reality is I get throttled far earlier, about 0.1 rps.
• I've compared this to Alchemy and they don’t show similar throttling, though I’m on their free tier too.
• If you’ve discovered a bug with their rate limiting or just got a better strategy, share it. I’ve had to re‑write my test suite to fallback on a local Hardhat node.

Bottom line: the free tier is unreliable for rapid development, especially with smart contracts that require sequential deployments and ABI generation.

Any thoughts on a more reliable endpoint or workaround?