Workbench has some great features that I can't do without, but when it comes to just browsing around a DB I much prefer PhpMyAdmin's interface over it. That said I haven't really tried any of the other offerings in the space, so I expect that's a big part of my opinion.

I agree with this comparison but Navicat is well worth the price. I use their data backup and synchronization (data and/or structure) all the time and it works extremely well. The "find in database" text search is a life saver too.

Sequel Pro - No native linux support

Workbench - Massively unstable on linux. (Although I do like the visualizing tools assuming I'm willing to put up with it crashing every hour or so).

Some dev environments aren't local, and sometimes this is faster, especially if you have to document the changes for future updates that don't include your fancy tools.

Sequel Pro's built-in SSH tunnel has worked for me in every remote development situation I've encountered.

It seems like a really bad idea to place a web-based database tool on a public-facing host when technology exists to route MySQL through SSH.

Even shared hosts support SSH these days. If yours doesn't, maybe it's time to find another shared host!

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure you can do so with PHPMyAdmin.

I seem to remember installing it on my own workstation, setting up the ssh tunnel and then pointing PHPMA to localhost.

It's not my favorite tool and I've avoided it due to security concerns but I've set it up for others as described and I recall it worked fine. Like I said though it's been a while and I'm fuzzy on the details.

Oh, if only were we using it only in dev environments…