> Most popular "VPN" companies only offer a proxy that merely runs over a VPN protocol.

Well that doesn't seem true?

Mullvad, Proton, Private Internet Access, NordVPN, ExpressVPN etc are all VPNs. You can use them for whatever protocol you want.

IMO if it requires a new network interface to be created on the machine, then it's a VPN. But an application-level tunnel (such as SOCKS) would just be a proxy.