Entity Framework Core is great for rapid development with LINQ, migrations, and change tracking. But in large government projects with complex reports and heavy queries, Dapper wins every time. Dapper is a micro-ORM — it maps SQL results directly to C# objects with minimal overhead. In my UP E-Mandi project, switching from EF Core to Dapper with stored procedures improved report generation speed by 40%. Use EF Core for CRUD-heavy apps, Dapper for reporting and performance-critical queries. The best approach? Use both together in the same project!
