The Fastest WordPress Themes

In short, these are the fastest themes for WordPress: 

GeneratePress Lightweight Theme - a very lightweight theme and one that’s specially built to make your site as fast as possible. One of the reasons why this theme is lightning fast is because it’s built so it doesn't need Jquery (you can build a site without necessarily relying on Jquery). It renders fast which is also great news for Google Pagespeed Insights. 

WP-Astra Theme - another super-fast theme with additional prebuilt child theme options that’ll suit almost any type of business.

Similarly to GeneratePress, this one also doesn’t necessarily eed the Jquery javascript library. However, Astra is generally heavier with features than GeneratePress, which is also the reason why it’s a bit slower (albeit still super-fast compared to other themes out there!).  

Neve by Themeisle - the Neve theme was also conceived with speed in mind, and it definitely deserves its place among the fastest WordPress themes out there. Like the others on our list so far, this one also doesn’t rely on Jquery and sports some special features that can significantly boost conversion rates for WooCommerce users. 

Also, it’s worth mentioning that the designers have made sure to include a bunch of beautiful pre-built templates.

OceanWP - another fast theme for your WordPress site which deserves its place among the top five here without a doubt. If you want to build a pretty-looking site that’ll work flawlessly, then this is the theme for you. 

Why is Speed so Important?

It should almost go without saying that having a fast site is critical in the ruthlessly competitive online environment. Who’s going to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a website to load nowadays? You guessed it, very few people indeed. 

Speed can impact a number of factors that’ll either make or break your site, such as rankings on Google, user experience, bounce rates, and of course, conversion rates. In short, the equation is simple - faster sites see more traffic and hence make more money.

What’s the Connection Between the Theme Speed and the Overall Site Speed?

The most important thing you need to remember is render speed. One part of this puzzle is the web-servers and pulling all the data from there as fast and seamlessly as possible, and the other part is the rendering speed of the site which is how quickly the web browser software can assemble and display the page after it's downloaded it from your web hosting.

This is quite simple and straightforward because the faster a WordPress theme is the faster it’ll render and download. Faster themes have less page weight (smaller download size), have less files (less stuff to download) and the code is cleaner so the parsing and rendering process is faster.

How Do You Recognize a Fast Theme?

Fast themes come in small sizes - their CSS is lighter and cleaner, have less JavaScript, so the browser can display the page with less CPU processing power and they’re also lighter in code overall again requiring less processing power on the device to render.

What is Jquery & How Does it Affect Speed?

Jquery is a JavaScript library, and the themes that use Jquery are usually slower to render. Jquery was introduced to save time when it comes to coding the more visually demanding and more complex elements of a particular theme.  

If you’re looking for a fast theme, and you want to build a site from the ground up, we’d recommend using a theme that’s not relying on Jquery.

Testing Speed

Be mindful when you're reading stuff about fast themes online. You'll see a lot of articles that have tested the theme demo and are using that as the benchmark for speed.

That's a poor way to test for speed and most of those articles are put together by content writers who know nothing about the technical aspects of site speed nor how to interpret a speed test result.

Here are the most important things you should look for in a theme: 

• The amount of JavaScript the theme has - this is quite proportional to the theme features, so if the theme contains a lot of features, then it will also require a lot more JavaScript. 
• The reliance on Jquery - as we mentioned above, a theme is heavier if it relies on Jquery, so ideally you want a Jquery-free theme.
• Look for themes where you can turn features like Vimeo, YouTube, and Google Maps integration off. They rely on JavaScript libraries and they slow the theme down. If your theme gives you the option to turn them off, it means that you can make it faster and lighter. 
• Pay attention to the CSS - themes with a lighter CSS are themes that have been specifically built to be fast. Usually the sales page with refer to lightweight CSS. 
• The presence of out of the box templates and child themes can be pretty useful if you’re not building a site from the bottom up. 
• WooCommercer optimized themes - some themes are going to work and look better with WooCommerce than others so be mindful of that. Fast speed is important but it's not the only important thing when it comes to conversion rate and selling online.

If you have an existing site and thinking about changing the theme, try our free speed test tool SiteSpeedBot.com to see if there's other areas you can optimize first - changing a theme is often quite a big project!

GeneratePress

This might just be the fastest WordPress theme on the internet right now! Tom Usborne, the theme’s developer, has created a real gem here, a theme so lightweight designed to be super-fast and user-friendly. 

With the WordPress Customizer options at your disposal, this versatile theme will allow you to adapt it to whatever kind of niche you want for your business.

The premium version gives you a vast choice of pre-built demo sites, super-easy to import into your site. 

For one of the fastest themes out there, you’ll have to pay $49.95 annually which is a real value for your money deal. GeneratePress also features a free version which allows you to get a glimpse into how it operates and see what all the fuss is about! 

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Click here to visit GeneratePress.com

Astra

Astra is another great, lightweight theme, similar to GeneratePress. Its lightweightedness is owed, in large part, to doing away with jQuery. This theme includes a variety of free demo websites built with Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg (the WordPress block editor), and Brizy. 

Astra also gives you at your disposal plenty of beautiful child themes and out of the box templates (more than GeneratePress in fact!) 

If you’re more prone to dabbling with the theme on your own, then you can definitely use the customization options in the real-time Customizer and get as creative as you want! 

This theme offers a free and paid version. The paid version starts at $59 paid annually, and then continues over to $169, and $249. You can also do a lifetime purchase starting at $249, then $499, and $699. 

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Click here to visit WPAstra.com

Neve by Themeisle

Neve is a general-purpose plugin that’s a great option for any kind of site. 

If, however, you specifically want a theme that’s WooCommerce friendly, then Neve is also up to the task. It contains a WooCommerce Booster module which helps you upgrade your online store with all kinds of new features that will seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce.

The team behind the Neve theme gives you three pricing plans to choose from. The cheapest one starts from $49, paid annually, and continues with $79, to $129. The prices for a lifetime purchase start at $149, and then continue over to $299 and $449. You can also download this theme for free and see how it works.

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Click here to visit ThemeIsle.com

OceanWP

In the same rank with GeneratePress and Astra, OceanWP is another fast theme on our list that won’t disappoint. Super fast and lightweight (although not as much as the aforementioned ones), it fits whatever kind of niche your eCommerce venture is in. It’ll provide you with pre-built demo sites so you don’t have to build a new site from top to bottom.

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Click here to visit OceanWP.org

Genesis

Genesis is a superb choice for bloggers - offers great templates, weighs less than 30kb, is SEO optimized, and also sports a mobile-responsive design. A fun fact about this theme is that it’s actually one of the oldest such themes on the theme market. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped it from being one of the fastest ones as well. 

The Genesis Framework Package costs $59.95 and it includes instant access as well as a one-time purchase fee. The Pro Plus Membership costs $499.95 and with it you get the entire theme collection. This is a great option for the developers and designers out there.

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Click here to visit StudioPress.com

Honorable Mentions

In the section that follows, we included other popular themes which are not among the top fastest ones, but are still pretty fast and definitely worth mentioning and considering.

These themes provide for a flexible styling and more child themes, precisely because they don’t have to conform so much to the lightweight code of the other themes we mentioned above.

Divi

If you’ve searched the online theme market so far, then you must’ve stumbled upon Divi. This is a very, very popular WordPress theme, with more than 600 000 users worldwide! 

The Divi theme is a multipurpose one, so you can use it for whatever kind of business or other type of site you have. Whether it’s a blog, an eCommerce store, a portfolio, another type of business site, you’re gonna be covered, there’s no doubt about that. 

The yearly access to this wonderful theme costs $89, whereas the lifetime one costs $249 and it’s a one-time purchase with a  lifetime of updates and support. 

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