ShellYard vs MySQL Workbench

Workbench without the Mac crashes.
Plus five more engines.

MySQL Workbench is decent on Linux, painful on Mac, dated everywhere. ShellYard ships a modern native desktop with a 6-engine database inspector (including Postgres, SQL Server, Mongo, Redis), live Health dashboards on every engine, and SSH-tunneled DB connections built in.

Download free for macOS, Windows, Linux

Free forever · Native desktop · 6 engines · Live Health dashboards

MySQL Workbench — localhost:3306

File Edit Query Database Server SQL Editor · Query 1

SCHEMAS

▸ information_schema
▾ acme_prod
orders
users
sessions
▸ mysql
▸ sys

SELECT id, email, last_login
FROM users
WHERE last_login > NOW() - INTERVAL 1 DAY
ORDER BY last_login DESC
LIMIT 50;

Result Grid

id	email	last_login
4912	k.rao@…	14:22
4891	jen@…	14:19
4823	amelia@…	14:11

3 rows · 412 ms · Workbench 8.0.36 CE

ShellYard · MySQL · acme_prod via ssh-bastion-prod

SELECT id, email, last_login
FROM users
WHERE last_login > NOW() - INTERVAL 1 DAY
ORDER BY last_login DESC
LIMIT 50;

Result · 3 rows 84 ms

id	email	last_login
4912	k.rao@…	14:22
4891	jen@…	14:19
4823	amelia@…	14:11

Quick decision

You probably already know which one you are.

Stay on Workbench if

MySQL is the whole job.

You only touch MySQL. No Postgres, no SQL Server, no Redis, no Mongo.
You live in the EER Diagram designer.
You're deep in Oracle's MySQL admin features — user GUI, server config, migration wizard.
You run on Linux, where Workbench is at its most stable.

Switch to ShellYard if

MySQL is one of several engines you touch.

You also touch Postgres, SQL Server, Mongo, or Redis — and you want them all in one window.
Mac crashes are routine. Force-quitting Workbench is part of your week.
You want a live Health dashboard — running queries, replication, cache hit — alongside the editor.
You want SSH-tunneled DB connections built in, not bolted on.

Feature-by-feature

What's in the box, side by side.

	MySQL Workbench	ShellYard
Database engines	MySQL / MariaDB only	Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server (T-SQL + AAD), SQLite, Redis, MongoDB
MySQL SQL editor	Full	Full · multi-tab · backtick quoting · ⌘↵ to run
Schema browser	Schemas → tables → columns	Databases → schemas → tables / views → columns w/ type + nullability
Query history	Per-connection	Per-Space audit log (every statement, truncated to 4KB)
Saved queries / snippets	Snippets panel	Saved queries per-Space with tags (Pro+)
Live Health dashboard	— (Performance Reports are point-in-time)	Live: SHOW GLOBAL STATUS, threads vs max_connections, InnoDB hit ratio, processlist, SHOW SLAVE STATUS — refreshing on a side panel
SSH-tunneled DB connections	Standard TCP/IP over SSH (per connection)	Pick any active SSH session as the route. No second ssh-config to maintain.
HTTP / REST client	—	Postman-class — methods, env vars, OAuth2, collection runner, 9 import formats
Network toolkit	—	40+ tools — MTR, packet capture, TLS inspector, SNMP, DNS, port scan, syslog viewer
AI assistant on results	—	Magellan — BYO Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini / Ollama key; reads result + schema digest
macOS stability	Long-running known issue — crashes on launch, hangs on result grids	Native Wails build, code-signed + notarized, universal arm64 + amd64
Modern UI	Qt-based, last meaningful refresh ~2013	Modern dark UI, command palette, multi-window (⌘N)
EER Diagram designer	Full — forward + reverse engineering, schema sync	—
MySQL admin GUIs (users, server config, replication wizard, backup)	Full	— SQL only
Migration Wizard (legacy DBs → MySQL)	Full	—
Pricing	Free (Community Edition)	Free tier for SQLite + network + HTTP + AI · Pro $24/mo unlocks MySQL + 4 other engines · Team $49/mo · Enterprise $99/mo

Reflects publicly documented MySQL Workbench 8.0 CE capability at time of comparison.

Where Workbench still wins

The list ShellYard doesn't try to match.

Workbench is Oracle's official MySQL GUI. It owns five categories ShellYard deliberately doesn't compete on. If any of these are your daily driver, keep Workbench on the dock — or run both, side by side.

EER (Entity-Relationship) Diagram designer. Drag tables, draw relationships, forward-engineer to DDL, reverse-engineer from a live schema. Flagship Workbench feature; ShellYard ships no visual modeler.
MySQL user management UI. CREATE USER, GRANT, ALTER USER, REVOKE — all through a form, with per-schema privilege checkboxes. ShellYard expects you to write the SQL.
Server status, system variables, and configuration UI. A live view of every system variable + an editor for my.cnf-class options. ShellYard surfaces these in Live Health but doesn't ship an editor for the config file itself.
Backup / restore wizard. mysqldump and mysqlpump fronted by a GUI, with scheduling. ShellYard expects you to shell out.
Migration Wizard. Pull a schema + data from MS-SQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase, or older MySQL versions and rewrite into a fresh MySQL instance. A genuinely useful tool with no ShellYard equivalent.

Switching path

Five minutes from install to your first query.

1

Install ShellYard.

Code-signed + notarized on macOS, Authenticode-signed on Windows, .deb / .rpm / AppImage on Linux. ~120 MiB. No account required to try it.
2

Add your MySQL connection.

Host, port, user, password — or pick an existing vault entry. If the DB is behind a bastion, open the SSH session first and pick it as the route. No ssh -L by hand.
3

Run your first query.

⌘↵ runs the statement. The Live Health tab shows alongside the result — threads, slow queries, replication, buffer pool hit. One click ships the snapshot to Magellan if you want a second opinion.

Before you install

The questions you'd ask first.

Does ShellYard work with MariaDB?

Yes. ShellYard uses the standard MySQL connector (go-sql-driver/mysql), which speaks the MySQL wire protocol. Any MariaDB server reachable from your machine — or from a bastion you can SSH to — opens the same way: host, port, user, password (or vault entry), optional TLS. Backtick identifier quoting, information_schema introspection, and the live Health dashboard all work.

Can I SSH-tunnel a remote MySQL like Workbench does?

Yes — and you don't manage the tunnel by hand. When you add the MySQL connection, pick any saved SSH session as the route (via_connection_id). The DB connection rides through that SSH session, same as Workbench's "Standard TCP/IP over SSH" — except the SSH session is one you opened in the same app, shows up in your sidebar, and reconnects with the rest of your workspace. No separate ssh -L, no second config file.

What about EER Diagrams?

Workbench wins this one. The EER (enhanced entity-relationship) modeler is one of Workbench's flagship features — drag tables, draw relationships, forward-engineer to DDL, reverse-engineer from a live schema. ShellYard doesn't ship a visual modeler. If you live in EER diagrams, keep Workbench on the dock for that specific job and use ShellYard for everything else.

What's in the Live Health dashboard for MySQL?

A Health tab next to Query/Data, polling on a user-set cadence (default 5s) with Pause/Resume/Refresh-now. For MySQL: SHOW GLOBAL STATUS, threads vs max_connections, traffic counters (Bytes_sent/received), InnoDB buffer pool hit ratio, top schemas by size, the full processlist (running queries with their state and time), and SHOW SLAVE STATUS for replication health. Each metric is tone-graded ok/warn/error. One-click Ask Magellan ships the flattened snapshot to the AI.

Can I bring my saved Workbench connections across?

Workbench stores connections in a proprietary XML file (connections.xml) that ShellYard doesn't natively parse, but the import paths that matter are there: CSV (export your hostnames + ports from Workbench, import to ShellYard), OpenSSH config (for the SSH side of the route), and SecureCRT sessions if you already moved through that. For credentials, the vault accepts manual entry or paste-from-1Password. Most users rebuild three or four connections by hand in five minutes.

Pricing? Workbench is free.

Workbench is free in dollars; on Mac it isn't free in hours. If you've spent any meaningful time force-quitting Workbench, watching the result grid spin, or restarting after a crash on a long query, you've already paid for ShellYard Pro ($24/mo) several times over. And Pro doesn't just unlock MySQL — it unlocks all five other engines (Postgres, SQL Server with AAD, Redis, Mongo; SQLite is on Free), the full HTTP/GraphQL/Realtime client, the 40+ network toolkit, and Magellan AI on every result.

Stop force-quitting Workbench on Mac.

Native desktop. Six engines. Live Health on every one. SSH-tunnel built in. Install, point at the MySQL you opened five minutes ago, and run the same query — without the spinner.