Top 40+ Best Free WordPress Themes – Based On User Reviews, Popularity, and Our General Opinion!
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You want a great WordPress theme but you don’t want to pay, huh? With other platforms, that would be nigh-on impossible. But, thanks to the generosity of WordPress developers, you can actually find a ton of great free WordPress themes.
To go along with our post on the best free WordPress plugins, we’ve collected 40+ of the best free WordPress themes for your viewing pleasure.
You may be wondering what makes a theme one of the ‘best’ free WordPress themes? That’s the tough part about writing a post such as this — design is subjective, so it’s hard to come up with an objective way of defining something as the best.
I’m going to try to mitigate that by bringing in social proof from WordPress.org’s active install numbers and ratings. That way, you’ll know it’s not just me who thinks a theme is the best — it’s thousands of other people as well.
Beyond that, I’ve grouped my personal favorites into the top ten or so, which is where I think most people will find the best themes for their needs. That said, you may find one you love further down, as well, so don’t be afraid to scroll!
40+ Best Free WordPress Themes for 2023
1. Astra
Active Installs: 1,000,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Astra is a massively popular multipurpose theme that has a focus on performance. It has the impressive distinction of being the first non-default theme to ever pass the 1 million active install count at WordPress.org.
With less than a 50KB file size, it’s incredibly lightweight, but it still packs tons of features, and lets you customize your site with the native WordPress Customizer.
The coolest thing is the free companion plugin that lets you easily import hundreds of pre-made demo sites built with the WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder or Brizy. You can find a demo site for virtually every niche imaginable, which makes Astra one of the most flexible themes out there (and explains the huge install count).
2. GeneratePress
Active Installs: 300,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading free WordPress themes I’ve ever used. I switched to it on my portfolio site and it instantly cut my page load times by ~40%.
But it’s not just about speed, it’s also incredibly flexible, and its multipurpose approach means you can use it for pretty much any type of WordPress site. That is, the demo above is by no means the limit of what you can do with GeneratePress.
The downside, though, is that GeneratePress doesn’t offer importable demo sites with its free version — you only get them if you upgrade to the premium version.
3. Neve
Active Installs: 200,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Neve is a lightweight multipurpose WordPress theme that offers flexible design options and excellent performance. I’ve tested a lot of the popular free WordPress themes, and Neve and GeneratePress usually rank at the top of the list when analyzing performance.
Neve also includes lots of free demo sites for different niches powered by Elementor or the WordPress Editor. If you’re willing to upgrade to the premium version, you’ll get useful features such as drag-and-drop header and footer builders, a WooCommerce builder add-on and even more importable demo sites.
4. OceanWP
Active Installs: 700,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
OceanWP is another lightweight, flexible multipurpose theme that you can make to look like… pretty much anything. Because it integrates so well, most people choose to pair OceanWP with a page builder, and, similarly to Astra, it also allows you to import free prebuilt demo sites to quickly get started.
OceanWP isn’t quite as lightweight as the three previous themes, but it does excel when it comes to customization options and features. It’s also still more lightweight than your average WordPress theme.
5. Kadence
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
>Kadence is a newer multipurpose WordPress theme that’s quickly grown in popularity thanks to its modern looks and flexible customization options, all of which are accessible via the real-time WordPress Customizer.
It’s been getting a lot of buzz in the WordPress space as the next ‘big’ multipurpose theme, and the importable demo sites look great, so this is definitely a good one to consider for your site.
6. Hello Elementor
Active Installs: 700,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Hello Elementor is a massively popular plain canvas theme from the Elementor team. It’s the most lightweight, performance-optimized theme possible, but there’s a big caveat — you need to pair it with a page builder such as Elementor if you plan to use it.
Essentially, Hello Elementor is just a blank canvas for your page builder designs, so the theme won’t work without one. But if you’re already planning to use a page builder to design your entire site, Hello Elementor is a great way to make it as lightweight as possible.
There’s no demo link because Hello Elementor literally doesn’t have its own design.
7. Sydney
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Sydney is a popular free WordPress business theme that’s a great option for both businesses and freelancers alike. Its built-in content blocks mean you can easily customize your homepage design, even if you don’t know any code.
In 2021, Sydney got a big performance update, and it’s now on par with lightweight options such as GeneratePress and Astra when it comes to performance. The update also added more importable Elementor-powered websites.
8. Blocksy
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Blocksy is another newly launched free WordPress theme that’s quickly growing in buzz thanks to its modern looks and coding languages, along with its detailed options in the WordPress Customizer.
When Blocksy launched, it was viewed as kind of the ‘Astra killer’. The Kadence theme taking over that position knocked a bit of the wind out of Blocksy’s sails, but it’s still a great theme with some awesome modern demo sites. It also comes with useful features, such as its own drag-and-drop header builder.
9. Page Builder Framework
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
As the name suggests, Page Builder Framework is a lightweight base theme designed to pair with your favorite page builder plugin. The basic idea is that you use Page Builder Framework to control your header, footer, sidebar, blog layout, and so on, and then use the page builder plugin to design your actual content.
As such, Page Builder Framework is very fast-loading and includes lots of customization options in the real-time WordPress Customizer. One downside, though, is that it doesn’t include any importable demo sites.
10. Zakra
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Zakra is another lightweight multipurpose theme in the same vein as GeneratePress and Astra. It gives you a fast-loading base, lots of customization options and tons of importable demo sites built.
Like Astra, the demo sites are built with your choice of three different page/content builders: The WordPress Editor, Elementor or Brizy.
11. Storefront
Active Installs: 200,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
An official theme from Automattic, Storefront is one of the best free WooCommerce themes you’ll find. Because it comes from the same team that actually develops the WooCommerce plugin, you can be sure it follows best practices — and it’s also easy to customize and extend as needed.
You can also find lots of child themes for Storefront to adjust your store’s looks — some of the child themes are also free while others are paid.
12. Writee
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Writee is a great free blogging theme that’s an especially good fit for anyone writing about food or travel (although you can use it for other topics as well). It also includes built-in related posts and social share button functionality, which eliminate the need for some external plugins.
13. Mesmerize
Active Installs: 40,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Mesmerize is a gorgeous multipurpose theme that helps you to build your website using live editing in the WordPress Customizer. The design quality of this one is really impressive, so it’s easy to see why it’s so highly rated.
14. Hestia
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Hestia is a free WordPress material design theme that can be used for a wide variety of niches. It’s based on the WordPress Customizer, which means easy customizations, and you can also find a bunch of free Hestia child themes that make it easy to switch up its looks.
15. Kale
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Kale is a free WordPress theme that’s great for food, travel, fashion or lifestyle blogs. It features a minimalist design with a heavy focus on imagery, as well as lots of little customization options.
16. One Page Express
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
As you can probably guess from the name, One Page Express is a free one-page WordPress theme that helps you to build your page using simple drag and drop. You can choose from lots of content sections to create your homepage, including video backgrounds, slideshows and plenty more.
17. Ashe
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Ashe is a great free theme for lifestyle or fashion bloggers, as well as other related niches. It has a clean look with lots of spots to highlight your images and featured content, and it also makes it easy to bring in your Instagram content.
18. ColorMag
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
ColorMag is a popular free WordPress magazine theme from ThemeGrill. It features a neat multisize grid layout, and also includes prebuilt sections to house AdSense or banner ads. As a result, it’s a great option for any type of publishing site.
19. Total
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Total is a free multipurpose theme that includes a detailed homepage, complete with parallax scrolling effect. It’s also WooCommerce-ready, and works great with page builders such as Elementor and Beaver Builder.
20. NewsMag
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
NewsMag is another stellar free WordPress magazine theme that makes a great option for publishers. Like ColorMag, it includes built-in slots for banner or AdSense ads, and it also offers four different blog page styles for you to choose from.
21. Spacious
Active Installs: 50,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Spacious is a free responsive WordPress theme from ThemeGrill — the same makers of the popular ColorMag theme. It’s well-suited to creating a business or portfolio site, and includes a variety of layouts and templates.
22. Vantage
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Vantage is a free multipurpose theme from SiteOrigin, the developers behind the massively popular SiteOrigin Page Builder plugin. As you’d expect, it integrates well with the page builder, and it’s also WooCommerce-ready and integrated with Smart Slider 3.
23. Customizr
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Customizr is a flexible, lightweight theme from Nicolas Guillaume, of Press Customizr. It offers nice parallax scrolling, and is easy to customize via the live WordPress Customizer (hence the name!).
24. Primer
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Primer is a free multipurpose theme from GoDaddy (yes, that GoDaddy — they make themes now). There was some controversy when this theme was released, but it’s quickly grown in popularity, and it makes for a great base theme. GoDaddy have also released some free child themes to offer a different look.
25. Hemingway
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
True to the name, Hemingway is a free theme that’s especially popular with bloggers and writers. It offers a clean design that really puts the focus right on your words.
26. Lightning
Active Installs: 50,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Lightning is a free Bootstrap-based WordPress theme that’s great for any type of site. One neat thing is that it’s designed to work well with custom post types and taxonomies, which makes it a good option if you’re planning to use non-standard post types.
27. Olsen Light
Active Installs: 9,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Olsen light is a free blogging theme that works especially well for fashion and lifestyle bloggers. It includes built-in social sharing icons, as well as custom widgets and a dedicated Instagram integration.
28. Hitchcock
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Hitchcock is a free portfolio theme for designers, photographers and other visual creatives. The homepage features a great-looking image grid to showcase work, and the bold full-screen background adds a nice effect. Also, if users hover over an image in the grid, they’ll see the title and meta information.
29. Travelify
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Travelify is a free travel blogger theme from the Colorlib family. The top features a bold post-slider, and all of the individual blog posts also have large featured images to help you to showcase your travel photography.
30. Nikkon
Active Installs: 4,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Nikkon is a multipurpose creative theme that features a neat masonry grid on the homepage. If you want to switch things up, it also includes multiple page layouts, as well as different footer layouts.
31. AccessPress Parallax
Active Installs: 9,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
As you’d expect, AccessPress Parallax’s defining feature is the built-in one-page parallax design. Beyond this, it also features a variety of sections for services, team members, portfolios, testimonials and more.
32. Edge
Active Installs: 7,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Edge is a free WordPress blogging theme from Theme Freesia. It features a clean design, and uses the native WordPress Customizer for easy code-free changes. Like some of the other themes, you can also find free Edge child themes that offer a different look. For example, the Alternative child theme.
33. Vertex
Active Installs: 4,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Vertex is a responsive creative theme that makes great use of white space in its minimal look. It also offers a unique header, which sits as a vertical menu in the full-width hero image.
34. Baskerville
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Baskerville is a free retina-ready masonry theme that’s great for sharing all different types of media — from quotes and images to full posts. It’s lightweight, minimal and, thanks to the masonry layout, great for displaying lots of content.
35. Ultra
Active Installs: 8,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
If you want something clean and lightweight for a business or portfolio website, Ultra is a solid option. It uses the free SiteOrigin Page Builder for easy layout control, as well as Smart Slider for sliders.
36. xMag
Active Installs: 3,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
A free WordPress magazine theme, xMag offers a simple design for blogs or news websites. It includes built-in social follow icons, as well as eye-catching styling for each post’s category.
37. Fukasawa
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Anders Norén has already made a few appearances on this list with the Hemingway, Hitchcock and Baskerville themes, and Fukasawa is another of his popular free themes. It features a minimalist masonry grid that makes it a great option for photographers or other visual artists.
You can also embed galleries directly into the masonry grid, which is a neat effect.
38. Himalayas
Active Installs: 6,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Himalayas is a free one-page parallax theme that’s a great option for businesses, portfolios and even travel blogs. The one-page design features a variety of sections for you to control, and the blog layout has a big featured image that’s perfect for travel photos.
39. Modern
Active Installs: 4,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Modern is a free portfolio theme that’s accessibility-ready and built for readability. It gives you a bold full-width slider up top, with a filterable portfolio below to show off the different areas of your work.
40. Flexia
Active Installs: 1,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Flexia is a relatively new offering (at the time of writing), but it’s got a great modern design and comes with lots of customization options in the WordPress Customizer. All in all, the styling of this one is great, and it’s also WooCommerce-ready should you want to make a store.
41. Pixgraphy
Active Installs: 4,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Pixgraphy is a free WordPress photography theme that’s designed to help you to display or sell your images. The homepage features a great-looking masonry grid, and it’s also WooCommerce-ready should you want to integrate photography sales into your site.
42. Hueman
Active Installs: 50,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Hueman (not human) is a popular free magazine and blog theme that comes with a ton of customization options via its free companion plugin and the WordPress Customizer. It’s also got a nice colorful look that stands out from many other magazine themes.
43. Virtue
Active Installs: 40,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Virtue is a free multipurpose offering from Kadence Themes. It has built-in schema.org microdata to help you to get rich snippets in Google, as well as a clean Bootstrap-based design and WooCommerce capability. It’s also packed with tons of customization options if you want to switch things up.
Used/using any of these themes? Any other top-notch free WordPress themes you’d like to recommend?
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