MySQL provides four main isolation levels: Read Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read, and Serializable. Each level has its own set of benefits and drawbacks when it comes to concurrency and data consistency. The goal is to strike a balance between performance and reliability for your application's use case. Isolation levels instruct the database engine on how to manage multiple transactions being performed concurrently and what violations are possible. By setting a specific isolation level, you can fine-tune the balance between safety and performance in your MySQL database.