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Are you looking for a fast WordPress theme to start your next project? We did the heavy lifting for you and ran some speed tests on the most used WordPress themes. In this guide, we share the performance of lightweight and more customizable themes such as Divi or Avada. We also show you how to optimize your theme and make your website faster, which should help you to choose the right tools for your next development project.
For our analysis, we have selected the most popular themes on the market (free and paid), and here’s our shortlist below:
5 Lightweight Themes
5 Themes That Come With a Page Builder
- Avada (Fusion builder)
- Divi (Divi Builder)
- BeTheme (BeBuilder)
- The 7 (Elementor page builder)
- Salient (WPBakery page builder)
Let’s review and go over the performance results for each theme:
The 10 Fastest WordPress Themes + Test Data
1. Hello
A plain vanilla free theme developed by Elementor and tailored for their page builder. It takes up just 6kb of memory resources, so as a result, the customization options are limited if you use the theme alone.
Performance results for the Hello theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 90/100
- First Contentful Paint: 3.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.8s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.9s
- Speed Index: 1.4s
- Time To Interactive: 1.4s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 2.2s
- Total page size: 990 KB
- HTTP requests: 13
2. Astra
Astra is one of the most popular free WordPress themes due to its lightweight code, user-friendly features, and thousands of ready-to-use templates.
Performance results for the Astra theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 91/100
- First Contentful Paint: 2.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.9s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.8s
- Speed Index: 1.3s
- Time To Interactive: 1.4s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 2.1s
- Total page size: 890 KB
- HTTP requests: 12
3. OceanWP
Lightweight and highly extendable, it will enable you to create almost any type of website. It’s a fully responsive theme that looks great on mobile and has its own translation tools. It has many templates built with Gutenberg (the WordPress editor) and popular builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder.
Performance results for the OceanWP theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 88/100
- First Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 2.9s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.8s
- Speed Index: 2.3s
- Time To Interactive: 1.4s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 3.2s
- Total page size: 996 KB
- HTTP requests: 13
4. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a lightweight theme built with a focus on usability and speed (a fresh GeneratePress install adds less than 10kb to your page size). The theme takes full advantage of the block editor (Gutenberg), which gives you more control over creating your content.
Performance results for the GeneratePress theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 86/100
- First Contentful Paint: 3.3s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.7s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.8s
- Speed Index: 1.3s
- Time To Interactive: 2.5s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 3.1s
- Total page size: 890 KB
- HTTP requests: 12
5. Kadence
Kadence Theme is a lightweight yet full-featured WordPress theme for beautiful fast-loading sites. The developer made the demos accessible and built a drag-and-drop header and footer builder to build any type of header in minutes. The multi-purpose template library has different designs that can fit hundreds of projects.
Performance results for the Kadence theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 89/100
- First Contentful Paint: 3.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.9 s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.9s
- Speed Index: 1.3s
- Time To Interactive: 1.7s
- Total Blocking Time: 0.3 ms
- Total Loading time: 2.8s
- Total page size: 898 KB
- HTTP requests: 10
| ⚠️ Important: The next themes are coming with their page builder (or are bundled with Elementor or WP Bakery). That’s why they are in a separate section, and the results are from a new test site with similar elements across the page builders. |
6. Avada (+ Fusion Builder)
The #1 selling theme on Envato for years. There are thousands of easy-to-customize templates in the library. It’s a website builder that allows you to build your site from the header to the footer, thanks to the powerful Fusion Builder. Avada is 100% maintained in-house by the same team and is not reliant on third-party tools.
Performance results for the Avada theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 87/100
- First Contentful Paint: 3.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.5s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.7s
- Speed Index: 1.5s
- Time To Interactive: 2.4s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 2.4s
- Total page size: 998 KB
- HTTP requests: 12
7. Divi (+ Divi Builder)
Divi is a powerful theme thanks to its visual page builder. Elegant Themes was among the first companies to bring the WYSIWYG to WordPress. You can build everything visually using the Divi framework without ever touching a single line of code (and without installing and configuring any plugins to bring additional features).
Performance results for the Divi theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 84/100
- First Contentful Paint: 4.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.8s
- Speed Index: 1.4s
- Time To Interactive: 1.1s
- Total Blocking Time: 0.1 ms
- Total Loading time: 3.1s
- Total page size: 1.2 MB
- HTTP requests: 14
8. BeTheme (+ BeBuilder)
BeTheme is a multipurpose website builder and best-selling WordPress theme with 650+ pre-built websites (with very modern and trending designs). Their BeBuilder is also fully compatible with WooCommerce, and they recently launched a query builder to build dynamic websites.
Performance results for the BeTheme theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 80/100
- First Contentful Paint: 4.1s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 2.9s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 3.8s
- Speed Index: 1.9s
- Time To Interactive: 1.4s
- Total Blocking Time: 0.2 ms
- Total Loading time: 4.1s
- Total page size: 1.4 MB
- HTTP requests: 15
9. The7 (+ Elementor)
It’s the #1 selling Elementor themes that offer a lot of customization from the WordPress dashboard. The7 has 60+ prebuilt dummy websites with exclusive templates for Elementor, WPBakery Page Builder & Slider Revolution.
Performance results for The7 theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 81/100
- First Contentful Paint: 2.4s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.8s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.9s
- Speed Index: 1.1s
- Time To Interactive: 1.2s
- Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
- Total Loading time: 3.8s
- Total page size: 1.1 MB
- HTTP requests: 16
10. Salient (+ tailored version of the WPBakery Page Builder)
Salient offers access to a library of professional templates with over 400 to choose from. They have taken the WP Bakery Bakery page builder as a base and added some extra features to it. Finally, Salient has an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 based on 5700 ratings on Themeforest.
Performance results for the Salient theme:
- PageSpeed mobile score: 82/100
- First Contentful Paint: 2.5s
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.7s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.8s
- Speed Index: 1.9s
- Time To Interactive: 1.2s
- Total Blocking Time: 0.35 ms
- Total Loading time: 3.8s
- Total page size: 987 KB
- HTTP requests: 13
Table of the Test Results
Below you’ll find a summary of the performance results for each theme. We used the “PageSpeed mobile score” KPI to rank them, but the total loading page metric is also important, so don’t forget to look at that row.
Lightweight themes
| KPIs | #1 Astra | #2 Hello | #3 Kadence | #4 OceanWP | #5 Generate Press |
| PageSpeed mobile score | 91/100 | 90/100 | 89/100 | 88/100 | 86/100 |
| First Contentful Paint | 2.1s | 3.1s | 3.1s | 1.1s | 3.3s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1.9s | 1.8s | 1.9s | 2.9s | 1.7s |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 2.8s | 2.9s | 2.9s | 1.8s | 2.8s |
| Speed Index | 1.3s | 1.4s | 1.3s | 2.3s | 1.3s |
| Time To Interactive | 1.4s | 1.4s | 1.7s | 1.4s | 2.5s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 0 ms | 0.3 ms | 0.2 ms | 0 ms |
| Total Loading time | 2.1s | 2.2s | 2.8s | 3.2s | 3.1s |
| Total page size | 890 KB | 990 KB | 898 KB | 996 KB | 890 KB |
| HTTP requests | 12 | 13 | 10 | 13 | 12 |
Themes That Comes With a Page Builder
Similarly, the ranking is based on the PageSpeed mobile score.
| KPIs | #1 Avada | #2 Divi | #3 Salient | #4 The7 | #5 BeTheme |
| PageSpeed mobile score | 87/100 | 84/100 | 82/100 | 81/100 | 80/100 |
| First Contentful Paint | 3.1s | 4.1s | 2.5s | 2.4s | 4.1s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1.5s | 1.1s | 1.7s | 1.8s | 2.9s |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 1.7s | 1.8s | 1.8s | 2.9s | 3.8s |
| Speed Index | 1.5s | 1.4s | 1.9s | 1.1s | 1.9s |
| Time To Interactive | 2.4s | 1.1s | 1.2s | 1.2s | 1.4s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 0.1 ms | 0.35 ms | 0 ms | 0.2 ms |
| Total Loading time | 2.4s | 3.1s | 3.8s | 3.8s | 4.1s |
| Total page size | 998 KB | 1.2 MB | 987 KB | 1.1 MB | 1.4MB |
| HTTP requests | 12 | 14 | 13 | 16 | 15 |
Key takeaways:
- All the themes go from acceptable to very good for their grade on PageSpeed Insights. There are either in orange or in green, there are none in red in terms of performance.
- Astra seems to be the fastest of the lightweight themes, with a 91/100 on mobile and a 2,1 s page load.
- Avada (with its own builder) also makes it to the top of the list with an 87/100 on mobile and a 2,4s page load.
How We Tested the Themes
Our selection was based on 2023 popularity, high numbers of downloads or sales on Envato, and quality reviews. Then we run an audit through the following performance tools:
Powered by Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix, both analyze the performance and the user experience of your website. The most important KPIs are the Core Web Vitals which come with a detailed report about how your pages perform and what are areas for improvement. That’s why we have included the 10 following metrics in our tests – measured on mobile:
From PageSpeed Insights:
- PageSpeed mobile score
- First Contentful Paint
- Largest Contentful Paint
- Cumulative Layout Shift
- Speed Index
- Time To Interactive
- Total Blocking Time
From GTmetrix:
- Total Loading time
- Total page size
- HTTP requests
Then, we chose 10 themes that we divided into two categories:
#1 The free and lightweight themes that come with a minimalistic approach and are more like a basic canvas to start a website:
- Hello
- Astra
- OceanWP
- GeneratePress
- Kadence
#2 The other category contains the “heavier” themes that come with their own page builder. We thought comparing Avada (and its Fusion builder) with a lightweight theme like Astra would be unfair. So the themes for the second category are the following:
- Avada (Fusion builder)
- Divi (Divi Builder)
- BeTheme (BeBuilder)
- The 7 (Elementor/WP Bakery page builder)
- Salient (WPBakery page builder)
The Testing Sites
For the first category, we built a realistic test site using the WordPress Editor, and we used the blocks to create a hero banner with a button, 5 testimonials with pictures, 1 call to action (full section with an image), 4 icons and text, 2 titles and 2 subtitles and 8 services with pictures.
For the second category, we made sure every time to build a page with similar elements present in each builder: a hero banner with an image and a button, 3 services with icon and texts, 2 images (we re-used the same), 2 text elements, 3 icon lists, and a call to action section with a header, sub-header and button (full section).
By following the same testing scenarios and the same content for each theme, we could conduct a fair performance comparison analysis. We did a new installation for each theme and used the same server for each theme’s speed testing.
| ⚠️ Important: Those tests have been performed on a server based in France, and we built each page ourselves. The results we have presented are from our own experience, and the results may differ according to the size of the images you upload, the amount of content you use, or even your location around the world. |
Give an Extra Performance Boost with WP Rocket
WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugins for WordPress that can optimize any theme in a few clicks. It also improves the performance of your site and your Core Web Vitals.
To understand the large impact of WP Rocket on speed, let’s see it in action with BeTheme, which was the “slowest” theme in our tests.
For the record, there were a few issues flagged by Lighthouse, listed under the “Opportunities” tab:
The recommendations include using caching, enabling text compression, reducing unused CSS/JS, and deferring offscreen images.
We activated WP Rocket on that test site, and we noticed a huge improvement:
All our performance KPIs also improved thanks to WP Rocket which also improved the PageSpeed Insights score (my site moved to the green with a 98/100) score.
WP Rocket also boosted the Core Web Vitals score and decreased the total loading time (from 4.1s to 2.1s). WP Rocket also reduced the page size and the number of HTTP requests:
| Performance KPIs | BeTheme Score (no WP Rocket) | BeTheme Score (WP Rocket) 🚀 |
| PageSpeed mobile score | 80/100 | 98/100 |
| First Contentful Paint | 4.1s | 2.1s |
| Largest Contentful Paint* | 2.9s | 1.8s |
| Cumulative Layout Shift* | 3.8s | 1.1s |
| Speed Index | 1.9s | 1s |
| Time To Interactive | 1.4s | 1s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0.2 ms | 0 ms |
| Total Loading time | 4.1s | 2.1s |
| Total page size | 1.4 MB | 780 KB |
| HTTP requests | 15 | 8 |
*Core Web Vitals
To fix all the PageSpeed Insights warnings and boost the performance KPIs, we activated the following WP Rocket features:
- Implement caching and text compression upon activation of the plugin:
You can also tweak your own options from the cache tab in the WordPress admin:
- The file optimization tab to reduce unused CSS (amongst other CSS optimization features):
- A dedicated subsection to optimize JS:
- The lazy-load feature to defer offscreen images (and load only the images located above the fold):
Which is the Best Theme For You?
It’s almost impossible to suggest you one single theme as it depends on your specific needs and your client brief, but here are a few takeaways:
- If you have a client willing to take over his website, update the content, and access the WordPress dashboard, then choosing a theme with a page builder may be easier (like BeTheme or the 7).
- If you are a freelancer looking for a theme with greatly designed demos for different industries, then Divi and BeTheme may be your best choices.
- If you plan on creating an advanced WooCommerce site with thousands of products, a lightweight theme like Astra may be wiser. Plus, it comes with advanced WooCommerce features.
- If you need to create your own forms, and product layouts and add dynamic data to your website, then a theme bundled with Elementor Pro is a great option. Elementor was one of the first companies to launch the WooCommerce builder, allowing you to build your own product template and shop page in no time.
- If you are hesitating between a few themes, install one of their demos and look at them on mobile. Responsiveness should be essential when building a website.
- If you are a web and design agency, Divi offers the Divi Cloud, where you can easily store your project and share it with the team. The collaboration and potential modifications can be done faster from everywhere.
Finally, choose a theme with fast support, recent updates, and accurate documentation. For example, OceanWP has an academy that offers webinars and tutorials to use the theme to its fullest.
Wrapping up
Now, you should be able to decide and choose the right WordPress theme for your next project. And remember, no matter which theme you choose for your next project, WP Rocket is the easiest way to improve the speed of your WordPress site and pass the performance audits on PageSpeed Insights.
