@Maverynthia They're not, and it'll probably stay that way for a while yet.
I'm seeing a lot of Mastodon instances closing new registrations because their admins can't afford more server to handle the load.
I'll look into contributing some money when I'm a little more familiar with Mastodon in general.
For now I expect we'll see a lot more new instances pop up only to close registrations after a few days/weeks.