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Most comic superheroes derive the energy for their powers from some external dimension, or in the case of Superman, the Sun.
This pushes the questions onto how things work rather than where the energy comes from. And good luck getting answers there. Writers often contradict themselves.
And I seem to remember there being a story (possibly non-canon?) where Superman is forced to turn a handle forever to generate "free" energy to power the planet.
I think you're thinking of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13
As long as the amount of energy it takes for them to fly upwards some amount is less than the amount of energy it would take for them to physically move upwards then you've got free energy. I only used superman as an example because he's probably the most iconic example of effortless flight. Compare it to characters like bird man that flap wings to fly.
Even if somehow there is not a single example of a character that doesn't use energy to fly and every author made up some strange way to collect energy, you've still made a hyper efficient power plant using a previously unusable energy source. Like if they get power from something like "magic" in the air that recharges over time, then that's still a brand new energy source.
Or just fucking teleporting lol