Boring old connectors -- 7.5A, smallest possible

Do you need many cycles of use? That sort of connector likes to have the plastic part slide off the pins if you fuss with it too much.

We use tons of similar TE connectors.

They snap together and work fine. We have a gun that shoots the wires into the jack.

Hmm. That hasn't happened to me. At any rate, no. It's for a rechargeable battery, so maybe one cycle every year or two.

I got the thing onto my board, and "kinda nice" turned into "gawd that's huge". But, I'm not sure I'm going to find anything smaller.

the mini-fit's are rated at 13A But, they look slightly larger.

Cheers

I checked the table of current versus gauge, and 18 AWG is plenty for

You might look into the connectors used by RC cars, planes, drones. They are for pretty high current. But not as small as what you found.

That connector has to be hand-soldered into a plated-through hole, and it puts any cable stress onto the printed wiring. The original Macintosh used similar connectors onto single-sided boards, and it was NOT reliable, the solder joint developed ring cracks.

I'd consider the humble spade connector, and wire a pigtail to the circuit board, secured with cable-ties for strain relief. Two cable ties, with one strain is off the solder, but the cable can still rotate and flex the joints.