If you're looking for low prices then the AR is unfortunately your best best. The massive market has both driven down prices and driven up quality. Nothing even touches them for cost to performance ratio. A ~$500 AR is perfectly fine, a ~$500 AK is a ticking time bomb that will start to fall apart.

You could look into some AR based alternatives, something like a Sig 556. Or look into bullpup options like a Tavor or an Aug. The Galil is a great gun as well. I don't know much about their availability but an AR180 might fit your bill as well (Brownells is working on a modernized AR180 upper currently). If you really want you can just get a mini-14, but they are drastically inferior to the AR15.

If you don't like AR15s that's fine, different strokes for different folks. But you won't find something that works as well as they do as cheaply as they do it.