That just isn’t true anymore, you can test for yourself.

You can just try it for yourself, use a VPN but dont do port forwarding and grab your favorite Linux iso, see if you notice a difference.

Torrenting works fine without port forwarding, thats what trackers are for. Forwarding won’t make your downloads any faster.

Whatever you think you need port forwarding for can probably be better accomplished using something like tailscale or wireguard. The reason most vpns dont support forwarding and some used to but dropped it is because its just not worth the hassle andc creates an additional way for your IP to be leaked.

Airvpn. But you probably dont actually need it like you think you do.