A VPN will get all the browsing data that could otherwise be collected by an ISP. I feel like the difference is a VPN is a self-selected group of people who are willing to pay for anonymity, which implies both juicier data and more likely to have money. I'd kinda rather not identify myself that way. Especially since it's legally established that you can't identify individuals by IP address (in the US).

TOR is its own debate. It's as secure as the node you're using, and my understanding was a significant proportion of them were controlled by US LEO which kinda compromised the point.

I’ve just always been of the mindset that pirating is so low on the feds radar that even if a VPN is tracking or even if they’re a honeypot it’s not like the government agencies are going to expose that by coming after some low level pirate. That said I’m not super active anymore and I always look for VPN’s who at least claim to not track.