What do you consider a significant percentage? 2%? 10%? 25%? If the software is as easy to crack as would be likely with low-cost "cracked" version, the software can't be that good either, since the bulk of their effort goes into protection, rather than product quality.
BULL!! The quality of Keil (assembler, compiler, linker) is second to none. That they protect their investment in the quality of Keil is just goo business sense.

I have no idea where your animosity towards Keil comes from, did you make a 'suggestion' they did not take to heart?

Now ... Which is "better", KEIL or IAR? What about the others? On what basis do you believe one is "better" than the others? How did you arrive at that conclusion? How many man-hours were dedicated to making that determination? Who paid for those man-hours? Was it Keil, or IAR, or one of their competitors?
I once, by a company, were tasked with evaluating sevaral toolsets and the basis was "our code" execution speed and core usage. keil came in as a souverain first, #2 was, surprise, HiTech.

Nope ... Price isn't the issue. Keil's Tech Support people blatantly and repeatedly lied to me about their product.
tell me ONE company, that you have had extensive dealings with, where the low level support has not done that. NOW, the "extensive dealings" is just for statistics, one instance does not prove diddlysquat.

So far, it's been much easier to use ASM, specifically a macroassembler, with my library of macros, which I understand well enough to equal the comparable intrinsics of any compiler, and, as a result, I know the generated code is as fast and as dense as I require.

Finally the cat came out of the bag

Erik