diff --git a/docs/middleware/pydantic.md b/docs/middleware/pydantic.md
index 774cec4..4ff5c90 100644
--- a/docs/middleware/pydantic.md
+++ b/docs/middleware/pydantic.md
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ app = SpiderwebRouter(
 ```
 When working with form data, you may not want to always have to perform your own validation on the incoming data. Spiderweb gives you a way out of the box to perform this validation using Pydantic.
 
+> [!WARNING]
+> Pydantic is not installed by default. Install it with `pip install pydantic` or `pip install spiderweb[pydantic]`.
+
 Let's assume that we have a form view that looks like this:
 
 ```python
@@ -54,4 +57,4 @@ The Pydantic middleware will automatically detect that the model that you want t
 
 If the validation fails, the middleware will call `on_error`, which by default will return a 400 with a list of the broken fields. You may not want this behavior, so the easiest way to address it is to subclass PydanticMiddleware with your own version and override `on_error` to do whatever you'd like.
 
-If validation succeeds, the data from the validator will appear on the request object under `request.validated_data` — to access it, just call `.dict()` on the validated data.
\ No newline at end of file
+If validation succeeds, the data from the validator will appear on the request object under `request.validated_data` — to access it, just call `.dict()` on the validated data.
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 88ee2ee..33ca90a 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -34,7 +34,10 @@ peewee = "^3.17.6"
 jinja2 = "^3.1.4"
 cryptography = "^43.0.0"
 email-validator = "^2.2.0"
-pydantic = "^2.8.2"
+
+[tool.poetry.extras]
+# Optional dependencies groups
+pydantic = ["pydantic>=2.8.2,<3"]
 
 [tool.poetry.group.dev.dependencies]
 ruff = "^0.5.5"
@@ -85,4 +88,4 @@ exclude_also = [
     "if TYPE_CHECKING:",
 ]
 
-ignore_errors = true
\ No newline at end of file
+ignore_errors = true
diff --git a/spiderweb/middleware/pydantic.py b/spiderweb/middleware/pydantic.py
index 45bbf00..6fca4c7 100644
--- a/spiderweb/middleware/pydantic.py
+++ b/spiderweb/middleware/pydantic.py
@@ -1,8 +1,26 @@
 import inspect
 from typing import get_type_hints
 
-from pydantic import BaseModel
-from pydantic_core._pydantic_core import ValidationError
+try:  # pragma: no cover - import guard
+    from pydantic import BaseModel  # type: ignore
+    from pydantic_core._pydantic_core import ValidationError  # type: ignore
+    PYDANTIC_AVAILABLE = True
+except Exception:  # pragma: no cover - executed only when pydantic isn't installed
+    PYDANTIC_AVAILABLE = False
+
+    class BaseModel:  # minimal stub to allow module import without pydantic
+        @classmethod
+        def parse_obj(cls, *args, **kwargs):  # noqa: D401 - simple shim
+            raise RuntimeError(
+                "Pydantic is not installed. Install with 'pip install"
+                " spiderweb-framework[pydantic]' or 'pip install pydantic'"
+                " to use PydanticMiddleware."
+            )
+
+    class ValidationError(Exception):  # simple stand-in so type hints resolve
+        def errors(self):  # match pydantic's ValidationError API used below
+            return []
+
 from spiderweb import SpiderwebMiddleware
 from spiderweb.request import Request
 from spiderweb.response import JsonResponse
@@ -19,6 +37,12 @@ class PydanticMiddleware(SpiderwebMiddleware):
     def process_request(self, request):
         if not request.method == "POST":
             return
+        if not PYDANTIC_AVAILABLE:
+            raise RuntimeError(
+                "Pydantic is not installed. Install with 'pip install"
+                " spiderweb-framework[pydantic]' or 'pip install pydantic'"
+                " to use PydanticMiddleware."
+            )
         types = get_type_hints(request.handler)
         # we don't know what the user named the request object, but
         # we know that it's first in the list, and it's always an arg.
@@ -34,7 +58,15 @@ class PydanticMiddleware(SpiderwebMiddleware):
         # Separated out into its own method so that it can be overridden
         errors = e.errors()
         error_dict = {"message": "Validation error", "errors": []}
-        # [{'type': 'missing', 'loc': ('comment',), 'msg': 'Field required', 'input': {'email': 'a@a.com'}, 'url': 'https://errors.pydantic.dev/2.8/v/missing'}]
+        # [
+        #   {
+        #       'type': 'missing',
+        #       'loc': ('comment',),
+        #       'msg': 'Field required',
+        #       'input': {'email': 'a@a.com'},
+        #       'url': 'https://errors.pydantic.dev/2.8/v/missing'
+        #   }
+        # ]
         for error in errors:
             field = error["loc"][0]
             msg = error["msg"]