I have seen the following argument (summarized here as I understand it):
Despite the promises that VPN providers make, it is known that they will often monitor your traffic, collect logs, might share your information, and will collaborate with law enforcement. Renting a VPS and running an OpenVPN server on it and using that as your VPN, is better - because you have full control over the logs. Let’s assume we trust the VPS provider to adhere to their TOS and privacy policy.
To talk about a concrete typical usecase, I am thinking about how this applies to downloading illegal torrents. In my current view, the only scenario in which the self-hosted option makes sense is if you pay for hosting using crypto and reveal no personal information during the process. Otherwise using a VPS would be virtually the same as downloading it through your ISP - and in some cases even worse - because the VPS provider might be more easily pushed to throwing you under the bus if abuse is reported since this might be a TOS violation. On the other hand, a VPN provider has a much larger motivation to protect users against this because the way that users perceive these protections is fundamental to their business model.
So, is there a reason to self-host a VPN instead of using a VPN provider? If so, should the VPS be acquired anonymously, or are there ways to protect yourself while using a provider that you gave your personal information to?
I self host a VPN exclusively for web browsing for my family. No endless captchas :)
The only reason I can think of to use a VPN is to get access to content that’s location restricted. Setting up OpenVPN on a VPN is pretty straight forward, and VPS hosting is pretty cheap nowadays. I really don’t see a reason to use a provider if you have the technical skills to set up your own. Furthermore, if you control the VPN server then you can ensure that it’s not logging your activity.
Most VPS are heavily traffic limited via the fine-print / QoS traffic shaping and will not work for torrenting due to that. And abusing a VPS for traffic heavy VPN is nearly always against their ToS regardless of what you actually use it for.