10 Fastest WordPress Themes Compared (Tested Results)

You know that nice feeling when you get a satisfied customer bragging about how much website traffic he or she gained and how fast the page is overall? These customers will turn into the most loyal ones, and if you want to get more clients like that you need to make sure you provide the fastest website possible.

But where should you start? Getting the right WordPress theme is the first step towards creating a fast website, but how do you check which theme is better? To conduct an accurate comparison of WP themes you need to remove all outside factors and test them out with various tools.

But don’t worry, we’ve done all the hard work for you so you can simply lay back and enjoy our best recommendations of WP themes. But before we talk about how we’ve tested our themes and share the results, let’s, first of all, find out:

What makes a WordPress theme fast?

There are multiple factors you should consider when choosing a WP theme if you don’t want it to slow down your overall performance. Your speed depends on the number of resource files, the content itself, the CSS and JS sizes, and many other factors.

Now let’s take a look at some good tips that’ll help you speed up your site. For those of you who have more time on their hands, make sure to check out this article for more details.

First of all, you need to check the size of the CSS and JavaScript. Most of the themes are overloaded with intricate features which makes their script heavier, which in turn slows down your speed (number of resource files, the content itself).

So take a look at the sizes of CSS and JS: The lower the number the faster the theme. The perfect size for both is under 100 KB. If they are 200 KB and more then the theme will surely make your site slow..(number of resource files, the content itself)

Another good advice is to go for a simpler theme and one that will perfectly suit your website’s functionality. Sometimes it’s tempting to pick a multifunctional, all-mighty theme, but you should consider that those themes may turn out to be really inefficient in the end.

Instead, define the main functionality of your website (is it a blog, an ecommerce site, a landing page, etc.) and choose a theme that’s specifically designed for it. At the same time, make sure that your theme has all the necessary features.

Because if it doesn’t, you’ll have to add them via plugins which will also make your page run slower. So understanding what you need and finding a perfect theme that will cover all the basics and at the same time isn’t too heavy.

But instead of checking all of these features one by one, you can also benefit from our already available case study delivering speed test results. For the purpose of full disclosure, we also share with you the methodology of how we analyzed the speed performance of each WP theme.

Before we get to it, just let us remind you that content plays a big role in your website’s speed. That’s why in order to minimize the differences between the various themes we tested, we created one page with a medium amount of content and tested all themes on it. This way, you can rest assured that everything in the tests was identical.

How we tested the fastest WordPress themes candidates

So, you might wonder: How do I check my WordPress theme’s speed?

Well, we started our research by picking the most famous and trendy WP themes out there. Then we started testing them in two separate trials:

Version 1

We installed and activated all themes without adding any content to them. Then we tested out all of these blank themes with GTMetrix, and Google Pagespeed insights.

GTMetrix is a perfect speed checker and optimization tool. It will tell you if your website is overloaded with unnecessary files. Here are the basic metrics with which it summarizes the speed performance:

PageSpeed score:

This gives you a score out of 100%, which is measured by testing various aspects of your website such as redirects, image optimization, Javascript minifying, and so on.

YSlow score:

Again, this is your speed score out of 100%, this time measured by different aspects such as cookie sizes, DNS lookups, errors, and much more.

• Fully loaded time: This metric indicates how long it takes for your web page to load completely when a visitor opens it.
• Total Page Size: The total size of your web page including resources.
• Requests: The number of requests that is sent to your server in order to deliver the web page and associated resource files (the lower this number the better).

 

The other tool we used is Google PageSpeed Insights (for desktop), which measures the speed from the users’ perspective and focuses on how quickly it is shown to the visitor. Some important metrics here are:

• Overall score: The score out of 100 shows the overall speed score of your page.
• First Contentful Paint: The amount of time it takes for your website to show the first image or text.
• Speed Index: How much time it requires for your website to be fully visible to the user.
• Time to become fully interactive: How much time it requires for your website to become fully interactive for the user?

Finally, we didn’t use it in our testing as it is similar to Google PageSpeed Insights, but you can also use 10Web PageSpeed Booster, which shows your Google PageSpeed score and automatically improves your performance to reach a page speed score of 90+.

Version 2

In this version, we added identical content to all of the chosen themes. Content-wise everything was the same. We built a page using Elementor’s free page builder, which consisted of 5 sections.

The first two sections had one text and a medium-quality image. The third section was an Elementor Google Maps widget. The fourth section was only one testimonial and the fifth and last section was a slide consisting of 3 images.

We tested all themes on this page in order not to have any differences in content. Then we used the same tools to measure the speed of the themes, this time with already added content.

So, here is what we found out:

Testing the fastest WordPress themes

Before we jump into our first WordPress theme in the list, it is necessary to understand how our chosen tools work and get a grip on our ground rules.

First of all, we decided that we will turn off the caching plugins and get zero optimization. However, it is important to know that in real life you’ll never use these themes without caching plugins.

Also disabling the caching plugin significantly lowers down the scores of the themes, but don’t worry, when you install and activate it with caching, your score will instantly increase.

Google PageSpeed Score for the desktop version is used to provide the speed score, and GTMetrix to get both the score and other parameters.

Now that everything is clear let’s start with our first fastest WordPress theme candidate. Also, if you’re more into visuals and videos, don’t forget to check out our Youtube video on the same topic:

10Web Website Builder Themes

When you host your website on 10Web, you get access to the 10Web AI Website Builder. With 10Web AI Website Builder, you can create your website using the power of AI by simply answering a short questionnaire about your business. You can choose a layout that corresponds to your business the best. However, you can also create a blank website with the 10Web theme. Here are some of the good features of 10Web:

• Clear and simple interface: The 10Web theme has a carefully crafted but at the same time clean and neat interface which your visitors will surely appreciate.
• Mobile-friendly: 10Web offers a good layout for both your desktop and mobile devices. And as an increasing number of people are now connecting to the internet via their phones, this is indeed an important factor.
• Perfect integration with 10Web’s builder: 10Web’s theme is ideally suited for the 10Web builder which makes it way easier to build and manage the theme.
• 40+ templates: 10Web provides 40 theme demos to start your website with, and make a well-functioning and beautifully-designed page even if you’re a complete beginner.
• SEO-optimized: The 10Web theme is search engine optimized so you can be sure that it will help you rank higher on SERPs.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, the 10Web builder theme itself is free of charge, but it comes only with the 10Web hosting package, which requires a monthly payment. However, the prices are extremely low compared to managed hosting providers, as you can get your website hosted for only $10/mo. You can also go with the agency package that bills $60/mo giving you the ability to host up to 10 websites at once.

Here is how it scored in our speed tests:

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content:

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 99
First Contentful Paint: 0.8s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.8s.
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.8s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 84%
YSlow Score: 68%
Fully Loaded Time: 1.7s
Total Page Size: 215KB
Requests: 12

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 88
First contentful paint: 1.1s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.4s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.5s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 62%
YSlow Score: 60%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.3s
Total Page Size: 1.24 MB
Requests: 51

Conclusions

As you can see, 10Web scores pretty high both with and without content. Considering the fact that caching plugins were turned on, having an overall 99 PageSpeed score without content and 88 with content, is a pretty high score. It also performed well on GTMetrix, scoring 62 and the fully loaded time took only 3 seconds. In short, we certainly recommend going with 10Web.

Hello Elementor

Next in our list of fastest WordPress themes is the famous “Hello” theme by Elementor. Let us first of all take a look at some cool features that it has:

• A complete starter theme: Hello Elementor is a lightweight WordPress theme and minimalistic theme with no styling at all. You can completely bend it the way you want with their builder
• Compatibility with Elementor builder: As you might have guessed, Elementor’s theme is perfectly compatible with the Elementor builder, which means that you can easily design your website from the scratch with the drag and drop functionality of Elementor.
• Compatibility with other plugins: The Hello Elementor theme easily integrates with other plugins such as Yoast, WooCommerce, and WPML.
• Ability to create multilingual sites: With RTL support you can easily create multilingual and translated websites.
• Good for landing pages: In this theme you can find some built-in tools for quickly designing your landing pages.

Pricing

The Hello Elementor theme is free. Moreover, you can also download the Elementor Page Builder for free. But if you want to get more templates and widgets you should go with the paid plan (starting with $49/year).

In general, Hello Elementor is famous for its lightweight files that ensure high speed, and the scores prove it too:

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 100
First Contentful Paint: 1.5s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.5s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.5s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 92%
YSlow Score: 81%
Fully Loaded Time: 1.8s
Total Page Size: 90.6KB
Requests: 8

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 81
First Contentful Paint: 1.0s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.6s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.5s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 61%
YSlow Score: 61%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.5s
Total Page Size: 1.65 MB
Requests: 67

Conclusions

In the “without content” section we can safely say that Elementor nailed the test, scoring 100 for the Google PageSpeed test. However, when we added the content, it got 81 on Google PageSpeed.GTMetrix score was high too. This is a pretty good result overall so Elementor is certainly worth giving a shot.

Zakra

The Zakra theme is one of the most popular ThemeGrill themes and offers multipurpose solutions which is why it has a solid fanbase. You can get a lot of strong features with the free Zakra theme, but if you want to customize your theme like a pro, then you better take the premium version. It gives advanced headers, various blogging options and WooCommerce tools. Another great thing about Zakra is that it gives high-quality customer support, which is rare to find in other free themes out there. If you encounter any issues or questions when running the theme, you can always find answers with their very detailed tutorials.

With Zakra’s standard theme and builder you can:

• Creative header module: With Zakra’s creative header module you’ll get different header bars, buttons, and transparent header options.
• Library of demos: Again, you get access to a large library of pre-made templates, ranging from themes for dentists to casual layouts for wedding websites.
• SEO optimization: You’ll get your website already equipped with SEO-friendly features, so it will be easier to rank high.
• Typography options: The theme is full of a variety of hundreds of typography options to choose from so that you can make your website’s look more unique.

Pricing

Zakra theme has a free version, but you can also choose its premium theme by paying $49/year.

Jumping straight to the test results:

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 99
First Contentful Paint: 0.7s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.7s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.7s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 86%
YSlow Score: 68%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.8s
Total Page Size: 175KB
Requests: 13

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 79
First Image or Text: 1.2s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.5s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.6s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score:58%
YSlow Score: 59%
Fully Loaded Time: 4.4s
Total Page Size: 1.41 MB
Requests: 56

Conclusions

Zakra showed very good results when we tested it without content, scoring 99 on Google PageSpeed and 86 on GTMetrix. However, Zakra didn’t do very well on the same tests when we added content to it. The Google PageSpeed went as low as 79. So Zakra might be popular for its layout choices and lots of demos, but we cannot claim that it will boost your speed.

Astra

Astra has a community of over 1,000,000 users who choose their theme to build their WordPress websites. Its main singularity is giving you a pre-made website, which is ready to go live once you install and activate it. It has different templates which will work for various industries, so there is not much work left to do. Here are Astra’s main features:

• Customization without code: You can use Astra without having any coding knowledge. All changes to the theme can be done via WordPress Customizer.
• Design freedom: Astra is perfect for page builders as it allows you to turn off the page title and sidebar as well as create full-width pages.
• No jQuery: As jQuery is known for hindering performance optimization, Astra ensures high-speed performance by using Vanilla JavaScript instead of jQuery.
• Lightweight guaranteed: Compared to most of the websites on WordPress which weigh approximately 300 KB, Astra is an extremely lightweight WordPress theme as it requires less than 50 KB of resources.
• Full integration with famous tools and builders: Astra works perfectly with Elementor, Beaver Builder, WooCommerce, LearnDash, Toolset, and Yoast. What else do you need?

Pricing

Astra’s lowing package costs $59/year, and you can get yourself agency bundles for $276 or $523/year.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 100
First Image or Text: 0.6s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.6s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.6s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 84%
YSlow Score: 78%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.1s
Total Page Size: 201KB
Requests: 9

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 89
First Image or Text: 1.1s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.4s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.6s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 55%
YSlow Score: 60%
Fully Loaded Time: 4.5s
Total Page Size: 1.48MB
Requests: 51

Conclusions

Based on our test results, we can surely say that the Astra theme is pretty fast. Achieving a Google PageSpeed score of 89 with content added certainly is proof. However, notice that GTMetrix results are pretty low compared to 10Web, Elementor, and even Zakra.

Page Builder Framework

Time to get to one of the most modern themes in our fastest WordPress themes comparison. Page Builder Framework identifies itself as a modern, minimalistic, and fast theme that is made for the new WordPress era. Here is what you can get from it:

• Flexibility: You get endless customization options that you can use to build and edit your website directly from WP Customizer.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Page Builder Framework is 100 % mobile-friendly, so you can be sure your page will look great on all devices.
• Developer-friendly: This WordPress theme is also good for developers as you can extend your page through hooks and also use Gulp, BrowserSync, or Sass to make your workflow more optimized.
• Embraces translations: The Page Builder Framework theme can be easily translated, as it is fully compatible with famous multilingual plugins such as Polyland or WPML.
• Works well with Gutenberg: The theme completely supports and easily integrates with the new WordPress Gutenberg Editor.

In addition to that, it is super lightweight (less than 50KB), follows the latest standards and practices, and is very easy to customize.

Pricing
You can get the core theme for free, while the premium version will cost $68. There is also the agency bundle you can get for $224.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 99
First Contentful Paint: 0.7s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.7s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.7s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 83%
YSlow Score: 68%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.1
Total Page Size: 240KB
Requests: 12

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 82
First Contentful Paint: 1.1s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.5s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.4s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 62%
YSlow Score: 60%
Fully Loaded Time: 4.5s
Total Page Size: 1.33MB
Requests: 51

Conclusions

PageSpeed Framework is certainly ranking high in our fastest WordPress themes comparison. It stands alongside 10Web and Elementor with its 82 Google PageSpeed and 62 GTMetrix score, all of this with content added.

OceanWP

Ocean WP is also considered to be one of the fastest-growing themes in WP. With 2,856,247 downloads it’s the favorite option for thousands of professional website developers and simply hobby users. Ocean WP too offers a wide variety of demos you can choose from as an easy start for beginners. Moving on straight to the features:

• Responsiveness: Entirely compatible with both desktop and mobile devices. Your website will look equally great on tablet and on screen.
• eCommerce ready: The theme works perfectly with WooCommerce so you can build a good functioning webstore very easily.
• Built-in SEO: Want to rank high on SERPs? The OceanWP complies with SEO best practices to push you higher on the results pages.
• Translation ready: The theme supports RTL languages which means you have a wide option of languages to choose from.
• Wide variety of extensions: With OceanWP you have a range of extensions available to you such as King Composer, Elementor, and Beaver Builder.

Pricing

Ocean WP has a free version as well as premium ones starting from $39/year up to $129/year

Now let’s see how Ocean WP has performed on our speed testing.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 92
First Contentful Paint: 1.2s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.2s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.2s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 70%
YSlow Score: 65%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.4s
Total Page Size: 598KB
Requests: 19

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 78
First Contentful Paint:: 1.5s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.6s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.9s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 49%
YSlow Score: 58%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.8s
Total Page Size: 1.96 MB
Requests: 71

Conclusions

Considering the fact that most of the themes scored 97 and higher in our fastest wordpress themes testing when they did not have content, getting 92 and 70 is a pretty low result. Plus, having 19 requests for an empty page is really too much. As you can see, Ocean WP did not do very well on the same tests with content added either. It got a low score of 49 on GTMetrix.

Divi

If you’re looking for a balance between simplicity and powerful features, Divi offers a revolutionary approach to website building. With Divi, you have the power to create stunning, responsive website designs with ease and efficiency. It also provides many customization options that cater to a wide array of design needs without slowing down your site’s performance. With the Divi theme or plugin, you get:

• Customizable design: You can quickly build high-quality landing pages that fit the branding and styling of your choice.
• AI-powered generation: Divi has a built-in AI that can help you design individual sections, full pages, or even an entire website in one go.
• An extensive design library: Divi has over 1,300 pre-built website packs, built by Elegant Themes’ in-house design team, catering to different industries and niches.

Pricing

Divi comes as part of the Elegant Themes membership, which is priced on either an annual subscription for $89 a year or a lifetime membership that comes at $249 as a one-time payment.

Jumping straight to the test results:

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 99
First Contentful Paint: 0.5s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.4s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 100%
Fully Loaded Time: 1.1s
Total Page Size: 212KB
Requests: 16

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 100%
First Contentful Paint: 0.3s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.3s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 100%
Fully Loaded Time: 614ms
Total Page Size: 223 MB
Requests: 17

Conclusions

A fast-loading website relies on factors such as caching, code optimization, server location, CDNs, image optimization, and more. However, Divi performs exceptionally well, as Elegant Themes demonstrated on their speed demo site.

Schema

The Schema theme is the perfect solution for content marketers who want their website to rank top on SERPs. This is mainly because of its inherent SEO features that allow for performance optimization, lazy loading of images and CSS, clean and neat coding, and other necessary SEO settings.

It also improves your searchability for Google and other search engines by creating rich snippets. Moreover, it’s helpful for marketing purposes, as it incorporates social media integrations. Here are some of the useful features:

• Responsive layout: Just like most themes in our fastest wordpress theme comparison, this one offers an easy and responsive layout as well which looks great on all devices.
• WooCommerce compatibility: Although Schema mainly targets content marketers, it does not mean that you cannot sell your product via their platform. You can easily create a small shopping section if you want, as the theme works great with WooCommerce.
• Translation friendly: The theme also supports RTL scripts.
• Regular updates: Schema gets updated on a regular basis. The great part is that you can benefit from these updates absolutely for free.

Additionally, Schema also has related posts’ widgets, Google Forms, ready-to-use icon fonts, and much more.

Pricing
The Schema theme is free of charge.

Are you wondering how fast it is? Well, here are our results.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 74
First Contentful Paint: 1.9s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.9s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.9s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score:53%
YSlow Score: 66%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.3s
Total Page Size: 1.68 MB
Requests: 23

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 68
First Contentful Paint: 2.1s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 2.1s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.3s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 50%
YSlow Score: 64%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.5s
Total Page Size: 1.84
Requests: 29

Conclusions

Although the Schema theme had a lot of cool features, it’s pretty slow. As you can see from the GTMetrix test, it received 23 requests for an empty page, which is way too much. In general, it scored 68 on Google, and 50 on GTMetrix with content added, making it one of the slowest themes in our fastest WordPress themes comparison.

Airi

Airi is a multipurpose WordPress theme that works perfectly for businesses or freelancers. It works equally well for those who want to start their website from scratch, and those who want to use an already pre-made Elementor layout. It also has WooCommerce support so you can easily showcase and sell your products. The main features of Airi theme are:

• Elementor support: For Airi theme, all the layouts were built using Elementor which means it has absolute compatibility with the plugin.
• WooCommerce support: Again, you can easily build an eCommerce site with this theme, as it works well with the WooCommerce plugin, too.
• Access to large amounts of options: At Airi you can get as creative as you want because you have the ability to change colors, fonts, and much more. You can access these changes via their Theme Customizer.
• Access to Google Fonts: You can choose your perfect font by picking one from the wide selection of Google Fonts.
• Variety of demos: If you don’t have the nerves to build your website from scratch, you can simply start one of Airi’s demos, make small tweaks, and get ready to go live.
• Ready for translation: Airi is 100% translation ready and has all the necessary files to provide a smooth and fast translation process.

Pricing

Airi costs $59/year for a single plugin, $99/year for yearly access, and $249/year for lifetime access.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 90
First Contentful Paint: 1.3s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.3s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.3s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 68%
YSlow Score: 64%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.3s
Total Page Size: 696KB
Requests: 23

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 76
First Contentful Paint: 1.6s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.8s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.7s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score:50%
YSlow Score: 57%
Fully Loaded Time: 3.4s
Total Page Size: 1.87
Requests: 63

Conclusions

Unfortunately, Airi’s scores were not really impressive. With added content, it scored 76 on Google PageSpeed and without content, it scored 90, which is quite low compared to the other themes.

Neve

This theme in our fastest WordPress themes comparison is the first one with a mobile-first approach. Neve theme is one of the creations of ThemeIsle company which is known for its fast and flexible themes. Neve was by far one of the fastest themes of ThemeIsle. Here are some of this theme’s features that you should know:

• Website layout control: You can pick the layout of your website. It can be contained, full width, or you can choose different options.
• Fully customizable: The Neve theme is a good option for freelancers and hobbyists alike, as it is very easy to set up and provides a lot of flexibility.
• Reduced weight: Forget about 50 KB, the Neve theme weighs even less. The total WordPress install is as small as 28 KB.
• 80+ demos: You can access a wide library of production-ready website templates and start your page in no time.
• Blog Booster feature: This expands your blogging options with elements such as thumbnails, metadata, and layouts.
• Custom design for header and footer: You can customize and redesign your header and footer.

Pricing

Neve is free of charge unless you decide to go with its premium version which starts at $49.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 100
First Image or Text: 0.6s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.6s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.6s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 88%
YSlow Score: 78%
Fully Loaded Time: 2.0s
Total Page Size: 148KB
Requests: 9

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 85
First Contentful Paint: 1.0s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 2.6s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 2.5s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 57%
YSlow Score: 61%
Fully Loaded Time: 4.0s
Total Page Size: 1.44 MB
Requests: 51

Conclusions

Neve is certainly ranking very high in our list of fastest WordPress themes. Without content, it reached a score of 100 for Google. With content, it scored 85, which is a job well done too. Basically, you can be sure that Neve will skyrocket your website’s speed.

GeneratePress

Finally, our last theme in the fastest WordPress theme comparison is GeneratePress. With over 2,785,604 installations and more than 300,000 active websites, GeneratePress certainly stands out as one of the most favorite themes for WordPress users.

Now, let’s take a look at its features:

• Creative styling: You can adjust the colors and typographies of your theme directly from the Customizer.
• Plugin compatibility: With the GeneratePress theme you can be sure that you’ll have no problems with the functionalities of your WordPress plugins.
• SEO optimized: This theme is built by SEO experts which means you don’t have to require too much SEO-related technical knowledge from your team.
• High-level security: GeneratePress gets constantly checked and upgraded by web developers, so you can sleep soundly, knowing that nothing will go wrong.
• Friendly with page builders: GeneratePress is entirely compatible with most of the famous builders out there which means your website creation process will be easy and hassle-free.

Pricing:
GeneratePress is free of charge, but you can buy its premium version for $49.95.

Fastest WordPress Themes Testing

Without content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 98
First Contentful Paint : 0.9s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 0.9s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 0.9s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 87%
YSlow Score: 67%
Fully Loaded Time: 1.9s
Total Page Size: 215KB
Requests: 16

With content

PageSpeed Insights Test

Overall Score: 82
First Image or Text: 1.2s
Speed Index (visible population for all content): 1.5s
Time to Become Fully Interactive: 1.6s

GTMetrix Speed Test

PageSpeed Score: 55%
YSlow Score: 59%
Fully Loaded Time: 7.7s
Total Page Size: 1.80 MB
Requests: 73

Conclusions

GeneratePress also appears at the top of our list. As you can see from the high results, your website will not only benefit from all the cool features, but it will also be pretty fast and won’t irritate your users.

Which one performed fastest?

Here is our table of comparison, where you can find the scores of all the WP themes. In this chart, all the themes are compared with the content added.

WP theme	Google PageSpeed Insights	GTMetrix Speed Test
10Web Builder Theme	88	62
Page Builder Framework	82	62
Astra	89	55
Hello Elementor	81	61
Neve	85	57
Generate Press	82	55
Zakra	79	58
Ocean WP	78	49
Airi	76	50
Schema	68	50

By doing thorough research and testing the top WordPress themes one by one, we can surely say that we’ve truly discovered the fastest themes for you, which are provided by 10Web, Page Builder Framework, and Astra. These three responsive premium WP themes are by far the fastest ones you can find.

FAQs

What are the most popular WordPress themes?

In our fastest WordPress themes comparison we’ve also included the most popular themes, so any theme included in the list is also one of the most popular themes out there. You can also add to this list the Divi theme and Genesis Framework.

What is the most customizable free WordPress theme?

For us, Astra counts as one of the most customizable WordPress themes out there. It’s also pretty fast and free.

How do I check my WordPress theme’s speed?

You can examine your theme’s speed with a few reliable tools we used in this case study which are 10Web PageSpeed Score, Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTMetrix.

How do I make my Avada theme faster?

Here are some useful things you can do to make your Avada theme faster:

• Compress your images,
• Install a caching plugin,
• Clean up your database and optimize your files.

You can also upgrade your hosting plan because it plays a very important role in your WordPress’s speed.

If you want to speed up your website, you should pick a theme that is already fast enough. Check out our list of the fastest WordPress themes and tell us which one you liked the best in the comments section.

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