some quibbles

D* doesnt only use SSE. It can do normal http request-response as well. Though, SSE can also do 0, 1 or infinite responses too.

Calling datastar's pro features "necessary" is a bit disingenuous - they literally tell people not to buy it because those features, themselves, are not actually necessary. Theyre just bells and whistles, and some are actually a bad idea (in their own words).

Datastar is 11kb and that includes all of the htmx plugins you mentioned (sse, idiomorph) and much more (all of alpine js, essentially).