10 Fastest WordPress Themes (Free and Paid)

fastest wordpress themes

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There are a number of different factors that you should consider when picking the right WordPress theme for your website. Responsiveness, compatibility, design, and of course, speed, are among the most important.

So, why is the website speed that important, what factors affect load time, and what are the fastest WordPress themes? Read on to find the answers to all these questions.

 

Why Website Speed Matters?

There are two main reasons why website speed is crucial.

The first one is more than obvious. As people are becoming increasingly time-constrained and impatient, nobody likes slow websites. A fast-loading website offers a better user experience and almost half of users expect websites to load in two seconds or less.

The other reason for having a fast-loading website is because Google and other search engines take website speed as one of the primary factors when ranking websites. This is directly related to user experience since the goal of search engines is to improve UX and promote the websites that offer the best user experience.

Whichever reason you find more important, it is obvious that your website needs to load fast if you want to attract more visitors, make them stay on your website, and ensure that they actually read your content.

 

What Affects Page Load Time?

Your website theme is one of the main factors that can make or break the speed of your website. If the theme is overly complex and takes a lot of time to load, it may not be the best choice no matter how beautiful it is.

After all, a website needs to load first in order for visitors to even see its design and read its content.

Another element that affects page load time is the total page size. The more data (text, images, videos, files) a page contains, the longer it will take to load. Therefore, make sure to make your page size as low as possible while keeping content quality at the top level.

Among other things, this means that you will need to reduce the size of your high-resolution images and videos as they are the main culprits for slow-loading content on the page.

 

10 Fastest WordPress Themes

To determine which are the fastest WordPress themes, we tested them on cheap shared hosting while disabling page caching. We tested both free and paid themes and found that there are actually quite a lot of free themes that have amazing load times.

Without further ado, here are the 10 fastest WordPress themes.

 

Zakra

zakra wordpress theme

Load time: 1.28 seconds

Requests: 11

Lightweight and responsive, no wonder Zakra is one of the fastest WordPress themes. It is a free theme and it comes with twelve demos that cover various niches such as education, business, yoga, and so on.

Moreover, Zakra is easy to set up and if offers quite advanced features:

  • a number of background image options
  • option to set a header background image to give your visitors a brief about your business
  • custom logo upload to highlight your business trademark
  • translation-ready theme to extend your business internationally

Demo | Download

 

Writee

writee wordpress theme

Load time: 1.43 seconds

Requests: 17

Another free theme, Writee is lightweight and designed for writers and bloggers. It offers a clean, simple design with plenty of white space that makes it easy for your readers to focus on your writing.

It is readily translatable into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. In addition, it is compatible with WooCommerce and offers the new, more flexible WordPress Customizer.

Here are some additional features that can convince you to choose Writee for your website:

  • expansive color picker allows you to choose a primary theme color
  • option to select background images and colors
  • countless Google Fonts to choose from
  • highly customizable optional slider

Demo | Download

 

Jannah

jannah wordpress theme

Load time: 1.45 seconds

Requests: 42

With over twenty website demos, Jannah covers various industries such as health, sports, food, tech, travel, and photography.

This theme is easy to customize as it allows you to choose from more than 800 fonts, adjust the layout, as well as select a pre-built header in only a few clicks.

Other useful features of Jannah are its built-in megamenus, Google AMP support, full ecommerce support, and BuddyPress integration.

Demo | Download

 

Divi

divi wordpress theme

Load time: 1.24 seconds

Requests: 125

Divi is one of the best premium WordPress themes and for a good reason. Apart from being incredibly fast, it also offers a range of stunning features that will improve any website’s user experience.

Due to its amazing visual appearance, user-friendly page builder tool, and a set of different layouts, Divi is definitely one of the best website themes at the moment. It can be used for building business websites, online stores, blogs, and portfolios alike.

Demo | Download

 

SociallyViral

sociallyviral wordpress theme

Load time: 0.784 seconds

Requests: 31

True to its name, SociallyViral has a set of features that enables you to publish profitable viral content on your website. From stylish social sharing buttons to widgets for popular posts and trending content, this WordPress theme focuses on making your content attractive and attention-grabbing.

In addition, SociallyViral is completely AdSense-optimized to boost the click-through rate of your ads and return on investment. Lightweight but packed with useful features, this theme also enables you to display opt-in forms throughout your website and thus increase conversions.

Demo | Download

 

Arke

arke wordpress theme

Load time: 0.922 seconds

Requests: 22

Free and super minimalist, Arke is definitely one of the fastest-loading themes at the moment. It is basically made of white space and text with no sidebars, widgets, or additional settings.

In other words, this incredibly fast WordPress theme offers a great background for your content, which makes it the ideal choice for writers and bloggers who are not crazy about fancy design.

Demo | Download

GeneratePress

generatepress wordpress theme

Load time: 1.947 seconds

Requests: 29

Lightweight (under 30 KB) and versatile, GeneratePress can be adapted to pretty much any niche thanks to its WordPress Customizer options. Moreover, this theme offers validated HTML and structured data to boost your SEO efforts.

Accessibility is not a problem for GeneratePress as it follows WCAG 2.0 standards to allow everyone to read your content with ease.

There are both free and paid versions of this theme.

Demo | Download

 

Schema

schema wordpress theme

Load time: 0.747 seconds

Requests: 47

If you are looking for a fast theme with a clean and modern design but without any latest features that you may consider too fancy, then Schema could be your best pick.

It was designed for bloggers and news style websites in mind but its WooCommerce integration makes Schema rather versatile.

The theme comes in two varieties: default and minimal. Therefore, whether you want a content-rich or text-based website, this theme is a good choice.

SEO friendly and one of the fastest WordPress themes, Schema ensures that your website loads quickly and that the search engines can easily identify and categorize your content.

Demo | Download

 

Astra

astra wordpress theme

Load time: 1.585 seconds

Requests: 13

Another free website theme on this list, Astra is very popular and lightweight (50 KB). In addition, it is very customizable, allowing you to use countless options in the real-time WordPress Customizer for codeless customization.

Astra comes with a number of free demo websites suitable for various industries. The demos are built with:

  • Elementor
  • Beaver Builder
  • Brizy
  • Gutenberg (the WordPress block editor)

Demo | Download

 

Avada

avada wordpress theme

Load time: 1.15 seconds

Requests: 55

One of the best-selling WordPress themes ever, Avada is also among the fastest WordPress themes. With a number of different demos that can be easily imported in just a few clicks, it allows you to build your website in a rather simple manner.

Avada has a great design but it also gives you the option to build custom page layouts and pack them with different elements and modules.

Moreover, this superfast WordPress theme offers:

  • various ecommerce tools
  • form builders
  • social networking extensions
  • other premium plugins

Demo | Download

 

So, Which Theme Is Best for You?

As you can see, all ten themes are superfast. So, if you had already set your mind on one of these themes prior to reading this article, its speed will definitely not make you change your decision.

However, you may like some of the other themes better, so your choice will basically come down to details and your own preferences.

For example, if you want a premium theme that offers top-quality features, you should go for Avada or Divi. On the other hand, if you want to start a blog, you may want to use Writee, Schema, or Arke.

Finally, if you don’t want to spend money on a WordPress theme, you can choose some of the free WordPress themes listed in this or in other articles on our blog.

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