Hi Brady. Thanks for your interest in our product suite!
Our paid Pro add-on is the only way to get recurring events functionality for The Events Calendar.
If you have both Pro and our Community Events add-on, then your users who submit events via your Community Events front-end form will be able to create recurring events.
Last but not least, we have a pretty great Refund Policy so you can buy one or many of our add-ons and thoroughly test them.
Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.