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Sometimes I will use a draft PR if I need to show some intermediate code, but I mostly agree. If you put up a PR that means you’re proposing this code is solid and should go into production.

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Totally. This is a relatively new concept since a year or so, but there are still people who doesn't use them. But I think a Draft-PR is a great opportunity to show the progress of your changes even if it's not finished yet.

What are the benefits of a draft PR over publishing a feature branch that others can access?

Assuming you're using GitHub: a draft PR has a comments thread, which you might choose to keep after merging; it can have linked issues (that close if the PR is merged); the draft PR is organised in the list of PRs so it has higher visibility than a branch (some projects have hundreds of branches but few draft PRs) and a more clearly presented one-line description, and you can promote it to a regular PR while keeping the comment history.

Overall theme: With a feature branch, you'll need to announce and discuss it somewhere else. With a draft PR, those are features attached to the PR.

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