They are slightly different, I think people are kind of asking if you are specifically looking for a VPS vs a seedbox. Some people do want a VPS so it's a fair question.

A VPS implies that you'll be renting a server and installing/setting up all the software on your own. You'll probably have some sort of SSH + root access to install things there since you're doing all that on your own.

A seedbox is more like a pre-configured shared VPS so it'll already have torrent clients pre-installed along with other software commonly used with torrent clients. Depending on the vendor and type of seedbox you often won't have root access and/or SSH access, usually the vendor won't want you to randomly install software system-wide that might disrupt other users on that seedbox server.

PS - !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com also exists, a bit quieter there but it's specific to the topic.

User @brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com explained the differences pretty well in this comment.