subdomain vs subfolder question in 2020

So I have a WordPress multisite setup using subdomains. Now I read somewhere in the past that google considers subdomains (home.abc.com) as different domains and doesn't pass link juice but considers subfolders (abc.com/home) as the same domain and passes link juice.
Here Is the interesting thing that I came across on GSC recently. My subdomains were targeted towards different countries so it was more like (uk.abc.com) but I also bought the top-level ttld (abc.co.uk) which I attached to the subdomain. I hope that makes sense so far. For about a year I was trying to build up both these domains and while my main domain (abc.com ) was getting traction, the UK domain which btw was basically a mirror site (the same content as main site) was getting nowhere.
As an experiment, last month I removed the top-level ttld (abc.co.uk) and just left the domain as a sub (uk.abc.com) lo and behold it is climbing up in SERPs significantly and the traffic in GSC is actually UK traffic as opposed to just global traffic. Now I am wondering for scaling purposes because I have 3 more country-specific ttlds if I should just ditch them and keep them as just subdomains? Any expert opinion on this?

Subdomain is treated as new domain.

If you are getting traction with one subdomain, scale it.

Try it with another subdomain and see what happens.

MisterXYZ said:

Subdomain is treated as new domain.

If you are getting traction with one subdomain, scale it.

Try it with another subdomain and see what happens.

Click to expand...

yes that's what am gonna do i think

Subfolders are the easier site structure to set up and understand as they are the same as setting up any other folder on a website. A subfolder is similar to a subdomain in that it allows you to create categories of content, but they are set up differently on servers.