As I see it, if your model is trivially mapped, you could probably go with something like ormlite on top of dapper. But if you need to custom map you model anyw

As I see it, if your model is trivially mapped, you could probably go with something like ormlite on top of dapper. But if you need to custom map you model anyway you might just as well write SQL to map it as some custom dsl mapping thing for the ORM in question. And, I don't use dapper for performance, I actually like its transparency and friction free interface to the db. Let's me get things done without workarounds. And most importantly, lets me use ssms with a repl flow, copying sql verbatim between vs and ssms.