If you want a lot of customisation, searching etc, without paying, you're probably best creating your own.
e.g. here you have over 5 million games.
Then you just need to download something to read the PGNs, for example.
http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/
Inflation depends on a lot of things, and isn't exact. Online rating is very inflated, but blitz and live standard tend to be similar to FIDE rating for most, with standard normally being a bit higher.
Is there any really good free databases out there where I can search through games by rating of player and year played? For instance, games where both players were 2500+ since 2000, and the results of all of those games displayed in statistical format?
Also I've heard it said that chess.com rating is well inflated when compared to what the same persons FIDE rating might be. Why is that and how much do you think chess.com's rating is inflated? 200 points? 400 points?
Thanks for reading!