I wish sqlite was performance focused. Perf is pretty much always worse than a db server, even after tuning the pragmas (the way it locks tends to limit single threaded perf and concurrency). Main benefit of sqlite is just its portability since you can easily embed it. It's nice for slapping a db backend on a client installed app, where trying to spin up a db server would be problematic.

There's probably an extension for permissions in sqlite but out of the box the db files are plaintext (you need an extension for that).

Good starting point for extensions: https://antonz.org/sqlean/