Technically it is free, until some native dependencies involve. Because you still need to setup build chains on each platform to make them compile. For example, vc on Windows, gcc on Linux, xcode on mac.

Besides that, unlike java, nodejs don't bundle a lot of stdlibs by itself.(It don't even have a lib for manipulate images!) So you end up being required to use custom native modules for some specific tasks.(If no js alternative available)

The nodejs way is build yourself, so you will have the right one. But since it is a bundled electron program, it doesn't work and you need to prebuild it.