Building my first custom 5" and trying to decide between F7 and H7 flight controllers. F4 processors are slower and less expensive, while F7 and H7 processors are faster and more expensive - FC with H743 processors are the cutting edge for FPV drones. Budget isn't the main concern, but is the H7 actually worth it for freestyle flying?

For 5" drones, 20mm and 30mm FC are most common - 20mm are smaller but more restrictive to build, for 5" freestyle builds you almost always have enough room for a 30mm FC. Looking at the SpeedyBee F405 V3 vs some of the newer H7 options.

F4 processors' slower speed doesn't have a noticeable effect on how your drone flies, but if you want to turn all the knobs to 11, don't get an F4. For freestyle, honestly F7 is plenty unless you're planning to run every filter and feature maxed out.

Enable bidirectional DShot if your ESCs support it?you'll need this for RPM filtering, which is the single biggest improvement you can make to filtering quality. More important than F7 vs H7 is making sure your stack supports bidirectional DShot properly.

H7 future-proofs you better and can usually run iNav and Ardupilot firmware in addition to Betaflight. If you're only doing freestyle Betaflight maybe overkill, but nice to have options. I went H7 and haven't regretted it.