If you're okay with old, battle-tested, cheap (and about 2-3 generations back in terms of performance)…

Any ath10k card is great. They support up to 802.11ac, cost about $10 (e.g. amazon.com/dp/B07HDXP9R4), and can run AP in either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands.

The firmware and driver are very stable and they in terms of regulatory constraints they defer entirely to the Linux kernel (which means you can use https://github.com/singe/wifi-frequency-hacker or similar for frequency hacking).

I don't have much personal experience with ath11k (802.11ax) or ath12k (802.11be), but I've heard good things about them generally.

For use in a real, practical access point, you want to avoid Intel cards. Intel's firmware completely locks down the ability to run a 5 GHz AP. For whatever reason, Intel takes a maddeningly conservative view of regulatory restrictions. They clearly don't want their cards to be used in APs. On the other hand, Intel's cards have a nice feature that they support dual-channel operation with a single radio (e.g. `iw list` shows `channels <= 2`), which is extremely handy for running a quick-and-dirty 2.4 GHz access point while staying connected to a WiFi network.