I've been using SQLAlchemy for quite some time now and it's a rich and powerful ORM, no doubt.

However, I found it to sometimes be a bit too complex for simple use cases.

Orator aims at simplicity. You can define your models quickly in a natural fashion. For that, Orator uses some magic and conventions (you do not need to define your model columns for example).

Regarding features, Orator provides useful ones out of the box compared to default SQLAlchemy (timestampable models, soft deletes).

Performance-wise, I have made some small benchmarks on my end, and Orator stands up pretty well but it some cases it is not as efficient as SQLAlchemy due to the ActiveRecord pattern, but nothing drastic.