7 fastest loading WordPress themes (Free and Premium with great design)

Neve – Free and Premium

The premium version of the Neve theme is great.

But I want to divert your attention to the free version.

Don’t let the word “Free” fool you.

Unlike the other WordPress themes, the free version of the Neve theme is almost like a premium theme.

If you could overcome a few shortcomings with a bit of CSS code or a plugin, you might never have to spend money on a premium theme.

I am not kidding. Here is the demo of the site that is entirely built on top of the free version of the Neve theme. I also used the free GenerateBlocks plugin for controlling the advanced layouts.

Go through it, and you be the judge.

What I really like about free “Neve” is that:

1. It has three well-designed blog layouts (just like a premium theme).
2. And eight header design presets (just like a premium theme)
3. It also has 8+ free starter designs (almost like a premium theme). You can build a business website and a blog with them.

No other theme provides such kind of beautiful layouts for free. Prove me wrong in the comments 🙂

Also, you could master Block Editor and build any layout you want. Free Neve supports block editor in a good way, except for a few flaws that you can overcome with the free version of the GenerateBlocks plugin.

So, let me tell you again, Hands down, Neve is the best free theme, according to my experience.

Anyway…

Usability issue with the Footer Builder

I have added some content inside the footer-based widget areas by going to the “Widgets” screen.

But they did not appear on the frontend because they were not activated in the Footer builder:

If the website owner has no clue about the Footer builder, this will confuse them and make them think about why footer content is not appearing.

Giving great control over the footer design is good, but not at the cost of hurting the usability.

GeneratePress doesn’t have this problem because it displays four footer-based widget areas without using the Footer Builder. If there is content inside a particular widget area, it displays it automatically.

Anyway…

Performance Metrics – Awesome (for both free and premium versions)

Performance Conclusion

1. For the landing page of Criyasoft, the DOM Elements count of 484. It is not at all bad when the maximum upper limit is 1500 elements. But it is not great because, for the same landing page, GeneratePress has a count of 312 DOM elements.
2. Simply put, the Neve theme has been utilizing slightly more HTML code for rendering the same page, and this could result in a slightly longer page load time.
3. Always remember! The more the HTML code, the more time it takes for the browser to render the page. This is also one of the reasons why the Neve theme has a low Core Web Vitals score when compared to GeneratePress.
4. But hey, it is okay because the total page load speed for the Neve theme is still under one second, and Neve is indeed a fast loading WordPress theme.

Core Web Vitals – Nice, but not great! (for both free and premium versions)

1. “Block Time” refers to the amount of time when the page was unresponsive to user actions such as button clicks.
2. For the Neve theme, there is a bit of “Block Time”, but that is negligible because the overall page load time was less than one second.

Other reasons for getting the Neve theme:

1. The Premium theme comes with 26+ great-looking starter sites.
2. It is compatible with Woocommerce and has good-looking designs for an ecommerce store.
3. Passing the Accessibility test on Core Web Vitals with
4. Neve theme comes in two versions:
   • Classic theme named Neve
   • Block-based theme named Neve FSE. It is more performant when compared to the Classic theme. It is also free but not good for beginners and non-technies.

SEO Notes

The theme follows SEO best practices.

Pricing

Neve is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $69 / Year.

GeneratePress – Premium

It is the best premium WordPress theme, according to my experience.

I didn’t come across any usability or accessibility issues, and the performance is top-notch, with 854 ms of total page load time for a landing page.

“Got it, but what about the free version? Is it good?”

Although it is highly performant, I don’t like the free version of the GeneratePress theme because:

1. The design is very generic
2. There are no free starter sites. But all other themes in this list provide many good yet free starter designs.

For GeneratePress, All the good things are saved for the premium upgrade.

But all hope is not lost with the free version.

If you can master Block Editor, you can still produce some really good-looking layouts without writing a single line of code.

Having said that, I am a big fan of premium GeneratePress because it gives you great control over the design of your website without hurting the performance.

On top of that:

1. The developer and the support team are great
2. The premium version comes with 90+ great-looking starter sites and supporting design options to control them—a huge time saver.

Performance metrics – Awesome

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements count of 312 for a big landing page is awesome.
2. Top fastest loading WordPress theme because of very small CSS+JS code size and lowest DOM count.

Core Web Vitals scores – Awesome

Other reasons for getting the GeneratePress theme:

1. It is compatible with Woocommerce and has good-looking designs for an ecommerce store.
2. It is compatible with WPML. So, you can create a multi-language website easily.
3. It passed the Accessibility test on Core Web Vitals with a 98% score.
4. It follows best practices.

SEO Notes

GeneratePress is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

GeneratePress is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $59 / year or 249$ / lifetime.

Unless you think you’ll be using the GeneratePress theme for more than four years, don’t go with a lifetime license.

Astra – Free & Premium

Astra is a mixture of the Neve theme and the GeneratePress theme in terms of performance and the quality of designs.

The free version has an empty and generic design, just like the free version of GeneratePress.

But you can overcome this by installing free starter designs. There are some really good blog designs once you install the starter sites plugin.

Person Opinion – I didn’t like the design details of the free starter designs because of the typography decisions they made. So, I felt like the free version of the Neve theme has better design details.

When it comes to the premium version, both design details and starter templates are great, just like GeneratePress.

But Astra Premium slightly falls behind GeneratePress Premium in terms of performance and accessibility.

Performance metrics – Awesome (for both free and premium versions)

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements’ count of 399 for a big landing page is nice, but it is falling behind GeneratePress’s impressive count of 312. But it is better than Neve’s 484 count.
2. Top fastest loading WordPress theme because of very small CSS + JS code size and low DOM count (not the lowest).

Core Web Vitals scores – Great but not awesome because the accessibility score is only 80% when compared to GeneratePress’s 98%.

Other reasons for getting the Astra theme:

1. 200+ Premium starter sites (GeneratePress has only 90+)
2. It is compatible with Woocommerce and other ecommerce plugins like Easy Digital Downloads.
3. It is compatible with WPML. So, you can create a multi-language website easily.
4. It follows best practices 100%.

SEO Notes

Astra is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

Astra is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $47 / year or 227$ / lifetime.

It’s definitely budget-friendly when compared to GeneratePress and Neve.

Kadence – Free & Premium

Technically, Kadence seems to be the fastest loading WordPress theme so far, with less than 700 ms of consistent total page load time for a big landing page.

The best so far was GeneratePress, with an 854 ms of consistent loading time.

But Kadence has now dethroned GeneratePress.

And design details of some of the starter templates are great too! The above design is from the free version of the Kadence theme.

“And you kept it in the fourth position of this article?”

Haha, there are no positions in this article. With only the slightest difference, every theme in this list is the fastest loading. All are the best WordPress themes in their own way.

But here are my personal reasons to keep Kadence as the third-best WordPress theme:

1. The premium version is too pricey @ $129 when compared to $47, $59, and $69$ for Astra, GeneratePress, and Neve themes. Sure, it comes with add-ons to justify the price.
2. But Forcing us to purchase premium add-ons by adding them as part of the $129 package is bad. We might never end up with those add-ons. So, I feel like it’s ethical to sell the theme separately and put a separate price on add-ons.
3. The accessibility score is only 85%. GeneratePress has a 98% score.
4. It has the same usability problem as the Neve theme because they both use the same footer builder, which doesn’t display widget areas automatically. Although you have added content to the widgets areas, you have to add them to the footer builder manually.
5. Unlike the free version of Neve, Kadence doesn’t provide multiple blog and header layouts. You have to install a free starter sites plugin to get additional layouts. have confused me.
   • Total page load time – Kadence is helping the site load at least 100 ms faster.
   • There is a large number of free starter sites with great design when compared to zero starter sites from GeneratePress.

However, the “free Kandence theme” is definitely better than the “free GeneratePress theme” because of the following:

• Total page load time – Kadence is helping the site load at least 100 ms faster.
• There is a large number of free starter sites with great design when compared to zero starter sites from GeneratePress.

When it comes to the premium version, both design details and starter templates are good, but not as great as GeneratePress. I didn’t like the typography in many of the premium starter sites.

Performance metrics – Awesome (for both free and premium versions)

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements’ count of 411 for a big landing page is nice, but it is falling behind GeneratePress’s impressive count of 312. But it is better than Neve’s 484 count.
2. Top fastest loading WordPress theme because of lowest total page loading time of 700 ms and even 640 ms sometimes.

Core Web Vitals scores – Great but not awesome because the accessibility score is only 85% when compared to GeneratePress’s 98%.

Other reasons for getting the Kadence theme:

1. 80+ starter sites
2. IIt is compatible with Woocommerce and has good-looking designs for an ecommerce store.
3. It is compatible with WPML. So, you can create a multi-language website easily.
4. It follows best practices 100%.

SEO Notes

Kadence is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

Kadence is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $129 / year or 799$ / lifetime.

Sydney – Free and Premium

Sydney WordPress theme is exactly the same as the Neve theme but better.

1. It has better designs and typography when compared to Neve.
2. The total page load time is 700 ms when compared to Neve’s 854.
3. When it comes to blog layouts, Sydney totally dominates Neve with six beautiful layouts.
4. Five header layouts are easy to try as well.

If you only want to build a blog, the free Sydney theme is better than Neve, GeneratePress, Astra, and Kadence WP.

I can even say confidently that Sydney is the best free WordPress theme for blogs.

All this is good, but the free version of the Sydney has one big problem if you want to build a business website with it.

The full-width layout feature is buggy.

If we are choosing the “Canvas” or “Default” page template, there is huge white space on both sides of the page:

There is also a “Full-width” template to overcome this problem, but it is causing a new problem:

If you notice, the title “Home” is now appearing. The only way to remove it is to:

1. Purchase the premium version
2. Or, Adding CSS code

This is not the case with other themes listed so far. They all provide an easy way to hide a particular page’s title. This is the only problem with Sydney.

Hence the fifth place, according to me. Otherwise, with the kind of designs and performance benefits it provides for both free and premium versions, it should be first on the list.

Anyway…

Performance metrics – Awesome (free version)

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements’ count of 381 for a big landing page is great, but it is falling behind GeneratePress’s impressive count of 312.
2. Highly performant theme with the lowest page load time

Core Web Vitals scores – Great but not awesome because the accessibility score is only 84% when compared to GeneratePress’s 98%.

SEO Notes

Sydney is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

OceanWP is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $55 / year.

It is the most budget-friendly theme if you like its designs.

OceanWP – Free

The free version of the OceanWP theme is highly-performant with 800 ms of total page load time.

Very impressive.

It also comes with three blog layouts, just like Neve:

But one thing I couldn’t stand about the free version is it does not allow me to remove the title of the Homepage. All other themes allowed me to hide the title easily.

OceanWP does provide an option to remove the title of a page, but it either removes titles on all pages or on none of them. So, the only way to hide the title is using CSS.

Also, OceanWP template designs are not up to the mark when compared to other themes in this list. They look outdated.

I didn’t try out the premium version because I wouldn’t say I liked any of their premium design templates.

You might like them. I am not stopping you.

So, for me, the only reason why it made it to the list is because of its performance.

But it is in the last because it loads too many Javascript files when compared to others in this list.

Performance metrics – Awesome (free version)

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements’ count of 371 for a big landing page is great, but it is falling behind GeneratePress’s impressive count of 312.
2. CSS + Javascript code size is almost ten times higher than the other themes mentioned in this list. All the other themes have a code size of less than 35kb.

Core Web Vitals scores – Great but not awesome because the accessibility score is only 84% when compared to GeneratePress’s 98%.

SEO Notes

OceanWP is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

OceanWP is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $43 / year or 178$ / lifetime.

It is the most budget-friendly theme if you like its designs.

Zakra – Free

Technically, Zakra seems to be the fastest loading WordPress theme so far, with less than 600 ms of consistent total page load time for a big landing page.

Earlier, Kadence dethroned GeneratePress with less than 700 ms total load time.

Now Zakra has dethroned Kadence with less than 600 ms of total load time.

But it is just like the OceanWP theme.

Zero starter sites for the free theme and the premium starter sites do not look good enough when compared to the designs provided by GeneratePress, Neve, and Astra.

One thing I couldn’t stand about the free version is it does not allow me to change the width of the Logo.

So, if I don’t know CSS or don’t buy the premium version, the only way to reduce the logo is by uploading a smaller-sized logo. But small-sized logos look blurry on devices with retina screens.

Also, even after hunting for the right option, I couldn’t remove or change the background color of the site to white color. Because of this, the header appears to have a half-white background.

I didn’t try out the premium version because I wouldn’t say I liked any of their premium design templates.

You might like them. I am not stopping you.

So, for me, the only reason why it made it to the list is because of its performance.

Performance metrics – Awesome (free version)

Performance Conclusion

1. DOM Elements’ count of 351 for a big landing page is awesome, but it is falling slightly behind GeneratePress’s impressive count of 312.
2. CSS + Javascript code size is almost ten times higher than the other themes mentioned in this list. All the other themes have a code size of less than 35kb.

Core Web Vitals scores – Great but not awesome because the accessibility score is only 84% when compared to GeneratePress’s 98%.

SEO Notes

Zakra is not generating the <title> tag when the title of the page is hidden on the frontend. We need to rely on tools like YoastSEO or Rankmath to fix this. Neve theme does this automatically.

Pricing

OceanWP is a freemium theme. The premium theme is $59 / year or 159$ / lifetime.