The benefit is its flaw. Because it is so abstract it is able to describe many, many things. It can serve as a basis for all of maths and unlike set theory really focuses on structure. Very roughly, think of it like functional programming to Set theory's imperative nature.
It is not a tight analogy. But: In set theory you pay a lot of attention to the internals of collections of objects. In category theory you are more interested in capturing structure and relationships.
In imperative programming you specify the internal sequence that makes up an operation, in functional programming you are more interested in the high level declarations, compositions and that the constraints on them are satisfied.
