NTFS external drive no longer working after updating laptop to Sonoma

My Seagate external NTFS drive used to work with my Macbook (Intel chip still) when it was down at MacOS 10 and 12. Now that I've updated to Sonoma (14.5.1), I can see it via Disk Utility but not from Finder. Basically I have a paperweight and I can't even read from the drive but what I want to do is read AND write. It seems like the Paragon driver I have that manages NTFS is too old (15.8.108) and I stumbled upon the Internet somewhere that said I needed 15.11.xxx. However, when I go to the Paragon website, it seems like we need to pay for the driver now. Even the Seagate website only goes up to 15.8.108. So my question is 2 fold: 1. Is it true that with Sonoma, I need the newer driver version? 2. Since I'm spoiled with free, what free driver is out there that supports external drivers that are running NTFS? I can't believe Seagate would leave us hanging like this with a paperweight and no support, forcing me to buy a Windows laptop to be able to view/use the contents of my drive that had been in use all these years.