That's an oversimplification. What I mean is that a commercial VPN sees all your traffic and knows your IP address. They do hide your traffic from you ISP and you IP from the destination. But the provider knows what your ISP knows.

Te difference is really on privacy.

But that is only one type of VPN. There are VPN providers like Mullvad that do not require KYC and claim to not log traffic. So not all VPNs are equal.

But if I run my own VPN it is secure. I would argue more secure since I am at both ends of the connection.

Tor is different. The way it is designed is to solve a different set of problems from VPNs like Wireguard and OpenVPN.

I use both. If I need speed but want to protect my IP address from the destination I use a VPN. I use TOR for many things where speed is not critical. Is a great option for bitcoin and Nostr.

Its a complex set of tradeoffs between VPN and TOR. People get the wrong idea about both. You probably aren't one of those people. Just righting this for others to benefit.