Why Do I Keep Reaching Final Rounds but Not Getting Selected?

It's been 3 months since my contract ended, and I've been actively job hunting for most of that time.

I have 2 years 7 months of experience in PERN/MERN stack development, along with CI/CD, cloud deployments, some DevOps exposure, and recently started exploring RAG applications.

So far, I've attended almost 30+ interviews, with many reaching the 2nd, 3rd, or final rounds. A few offers came through, but they were below my previous 9 LPA compensation.

What confuses me is that feedback is usually positive, yet I keep getting rejected in later rounds. Most of the opportunities I'm getting are for 3+ or 4+ YOE roles, possibly because my previous title was Senior Software Engineer.

At this point, I'm considering freelancing or contract work while continuing the search.

Anyone else with 2–3 years of experience facing something similar? Is the market really this tough right now, or am I missing something?