I know fastapi gets the hype, but I have found plain starlette quite usable by itself. Sure, it doesn't have the whole kitchen sink, but if you just need something small and simple then it fits the bill. In comparison Litestar seems closer to fastapi/django in scope
Same, I've built all my recent api's in Starlette alone and I find it excellent. It's clean, concise, well documented, and you can extend it as needed, supporting small -> very large projects.
