Is Private Relay the same as a VPN

Private Relay solves privacy issues that both traditional direct network connections and VPNs have, but is itself not a VPN.

Some background...

As for whether Private Relay is useful here? That depends greatly on why you're using a VPN, as well as on how.

Whether you are using a VPN to connect to a private network, or a VPN one that might offer geolocation changes for testing, or a VPN purportedly protecting the first few hops of a network connection and centralizing your activities for easier collection and tracking...

In general, Private Relay with SSL/TLS connections secures the traffic from end-to-end, and while seeks to avoid exposing your source IP address and destination IP address through to the server on the far end of the connection. In a manner of consideration, Private Relay is closer to Tor than to a VPN.

Private Relay is good for privacy.

SSL/TLS is good for security. SSL/TLS is a per-connection end-to-end VPN.

Private Relay is not so good for geolocation-testing of your websites or such (worldwide), as (AFAICT) the relay hops will stay within a country.

Here is some reading on the problems and risks with VPNs too, and which can outweigh what can be marginal additional security provided:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxnwk/you-probably-dont-need-a-vpn

Far too much of the commercial VPN market looks rather sketchy and privacy-invasive, to be blunt. Various providers have claimed no logging for instance, only to be later caught logging when their log data was discovered on the 'net. There have been other issues. And the widely-posted credentials for a number of commercial VPN services makes intercepting and accessing the VPN connections vastly easier.

If you need IP geolocation shifting for testing your own content delivery or such, or need some assurance the VPN servers are not collecting and tracking, running your own Algo or Streisand VPN server might be a better path.

If you're connecting into a private network of an associated organization with your VPN, the security provided with those is usually pretty good, as the keys for those are not widely known—as is too often the case with commercial VPN providers.