if he is unable to win in freerolls he will also not succeed on higher levels. What u describe is basically "move up where they respect ur raises" and it does not make any sense.
Yes some tournaments on higher levels are maybe more pleasant to play because players play less bingo but that does not mean they are more easy to win 😅
A decent player playing in freerolls adapts and books win after win playing them despite all the bingo players.
I know a lot of poker players who tried but couldnt adapt to freerolls.
One of them is my brother, he used to be active cardschat member, but he didn't find any point in playing freerolls, even considering that CardsChat games are usually tighter with much fewer players than public freerolls. I have many more examples, I mean players who I know in person... and in my case I also clearly see that freerolls are affecting my money games.
I mean lets take for example
pokerstars, check my brothers top results for 1-22 buy-ins
So the point is that my brother can play good poker for real money in MTTs with thousands of entries even if it's micro buy-ins $1.1 to $22, but he absolutely fails in freerolls with 80-120 players. Because there is nothing to lose and not much to win in these freerolls, so ranges are wider, variance is much wider too, in general outcome is much more luck dependant. It's not the type of game he is used to play. That's probably the case of the topic starter.
Also in my initial message I've mentioned "if you're skilled enough" cause TS might be losing in freerolls just because of lack of skills. So if he's skilled enough, but still losing in freerolls then good idea is just to ignore such games and play for real money. It works for skilled poker players. Most of the players that I know in person are performing very well at GGpoker rarely playing any freerolls there, unless it's all-in format.
Also... if you'll check records, then you'll find out that like 90% of CardsChat freeroll regulars are playing freerolls only, so statistically speaking topic starter has 10% or less chance to start playing for some decent money. So basically good choice is to deposit some $100-200, test his skills and depending on the outcome either forget about poker at all or start playing a better game. Because you know... he played 500 tourneys, that's a lot of time, any job pays better than zero outcome out of 500 mtts.