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A pay driver isn't really just someone who just contributes some of the green for their drive. It's more referred to as a driver where the amount he pays outweights his results. In other words if he wasn't paying, he wouldn't be on the grid. In that respect you can't say Schumacher and Alonso are former pay drivers. They were always going to F1.
Of the current grid, most of the drivers there have their drive on merit. Only Ericsson is the obvious choice of pay driver, he's never had any significant results in his career and there's no way he'd be on the grid without money.
Even Lance Stroll you could say he did win the F3 title, the same title Verstappen won. Without the deep pockets he probably would have moved across to F2 and would still be competing there, but certainly may still have made it to F1. If he got the results in F2 then he may have moved to Williams this year anyway. He can't have done worse than the now confirmed Sirotkin.
Perez could be a driver that wouldn't have his seat in F1 without the money. His results at McLaren may have seen the end of his career. But he deserves his seat still as his results over the last few years have been good enough.
But yeah the way I see it only Ericsson, Stroll and Sirotkin are the only true pay drivers this year. Although I do think Sirotkin is one of the stronger F2 drivers in the last couple of years. His creds took a dip 2016 after he replaced Vandoorne and failed to live up to expectations and what Stoff did in that car. But he did better than Albon and Matsushita a year later.
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