The 13 Fastest WordPress Themes in 2025 (Free and Paid)

Are you looking for a fast WordPress theme to start your next project? We did the heavy lifting and ran speed tests on the most used WordPress themes. We selected the fastest, from lightweight to more customizable themes, such as Divi or Avada. We also show you how to optimize your theme and make your website faster — this is also an essential point of your WordPress pre-laucnh checklist, whether you’re launching a new project or want to improve your existing business.

Here’s the shortlist we’ll explore in the article:

7 Lightweight Themes  

1. Hello 

2. Astra  

3. OceanWP 

4. GeneratePress 

5. Kadence 

6. Hestia 

7. Neve 

6 Themes That Come With a Page Builder 

8. Avada (Fusion builder) 

9. Divi (Divi Builder) 

10. BeTheme (BeBuilder) 

11. The 7 (Elementor page builder) 

12. Salient (WPBakery page builder) 

13. Beaver Builder Theme (Beaver Builder) 

Let’s review and go over the performance results for each theme.

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: 91/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.1s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.7s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.2s 

• Speed Index: 1.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.4s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total loading time: 2.3s 

• Total page size: 980 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: 93/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.1s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.8s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.2s 

• Speed Index: 1.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.3s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total loading time: 2.1s 

• Total page size: 892 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: 87/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 1.3s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 2.9s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.8s 

• Speed Index: 2.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.3s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total Loading time: 3.1s 

• Total page size: 937 KB 

• HTTP requests: 14 

4. GeneratePress 

GeneratePress is a lightweight theme built 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: 87/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 3.3s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.9s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.8s 

• Speed Index: 1.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.5s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total Loading time: 2.9s 

• Total page size: 990 KB 

• HTTP requests: 14 

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 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: 88/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.3s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.8 s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.9s 

• Speed Index: 1.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.5s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0.2 ms 

• Total Loading time: 2.6s 

• Total page size: 899 KB 

• HTTP requests: 10 

6. Hestia 

Hestia is a modern, versatile WordPress theme designed with performance at its core and trusted by over 100,000 users. Ideal for creative professionals, it suits businesses of all sizes, startups, agencies, portfolios, eCommerce stores, and freelancers. It includes pre-made patterns like call-to-action sections, testimonials, team showcases, pricing tables, and key figures. 

Performance results for the Hestia theme: 

• PageSpeed mobile score: 89/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.2s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.2 s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.3s 

• Speed Index: 1.4s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.6s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total Loading time: 2.5s 

• Total page size: 687 KB 

• HTTP requests: 10 

7. Neve 

Neve WordPress Theme is an easy-to-setup, ready-to-go option. If you have all your content ready and need a theme for a simple layout, it’s perfect. Neve is a fast, versatile, and highly customizable theme, ideal for blogs, small businesses, startups, and agencies. With a default WordPress install as tiny as 28KB, it’s incredibly lightweight and efficient.  

Performance results for the Neve theme: 

• PageSpeed mobile score: 92/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.1s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.9 s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.9s 

• Speed Index: 1.3s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.2s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms 

• Total Loading time: 2.2s 

• Total page size: 593 KB 

• HTTP requests: 9 

⚠️ Important: 

The next themes come with their page builder (or they 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 or modules across the page builders. 

8. Avada (+ Fusion Builder)  

The #1 selling themes 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: 86/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 2.1s 

• 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: 2.8s 

• Total Page Size: 1.1 MB 

• HTTP requests: 13 

9. 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: 83/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 4.1s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.2s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.7s 

• Speed Index: 1.4s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.1s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0.1 ms 

• Total Loading time: 3.2s 

• Total page size: 1.3 MB 

• HTTP requests: 18 

10. BeTheme (+ BeBuilder) 

BeTheme is a multipurpose website builder and best-selling WordPress theme with 650+ pre-built websites (with very modern and trending design). 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: 79/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 4.2s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 2.9s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 3.5s 

• Speed Index: 1.8s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.2s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0.4 ms 

• Total Loading time: 3.8s 

• Total page size: 1.5 MB 

• HTTP requests: 18 

11. 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: 77/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 3.5s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 3.9s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 2.6s 

• Speed Index: 2.2s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.1s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0ms 

• Total Loading time: 4.1s 

• Total page size: 1.4 MB  

• HTTP requests: 16 

12. 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: 79/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 3.5s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 2.1s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.8s 

• Speed Index: 2.4s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.2s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0.35ms 

• Total Loading time: 3.6s 

• Total page size: 992 KB 

• HTTP requests: 17 

13. Beaver Builder Theme 

The Beaver Builder Theme is a simple yet powerful framework for WordPress websites, built on Bootstrap for adaptability across any project. Known for its clean code, developer-friendly design, and reliable updates, it’s trusted by over one million websites. Lightweight and performance-friendly, it pairs perfectly with the Beaver Builder page builder and its powerful add-ons, like Beaver Themer, which lets you customize headers and footers with ease. 

Performance results for the Beaver Builder theme: 

• PageSpeed mobile score: 83/100 

• First Contentful Paint: 3.8s 

• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.8s 

• Cumulative Layout Shift: 1.9s 

• Speed Index: 1.6s 

• Time To Interactive: 1.4s 

• Total Blocking Time: 0.4ms 

• Total Loading time: 3.3s 

• Total page size: 983KB 

• HTTP requests: 19 

2025 Fastest Themes: The Test Results 

Below is a summary of each theme’s performance results. We ranked them using the total loading page metric. 

Lightweight Themes

1. Astra – 2.1s
2. Neve – 2.2s
3. Hello – 2.3s
4. Hestia – 2.5s
5. Kadence – 2.6s
6. GeneratePress – 2.9s
7. OceanWP – 3.1s 

Themes That Comes With a Page Builder 

Similarly, the ranking is based on the total loading page time: 

1. Avada – 2.8s
2. Divi – 3.2s
3. Beaver Builder Theme – 3.3s
4. Salientv – 3.6s
5. BeTheme – 3.8s
6. The7 – 4.1s

Key Takeaways: 

• Astra is the fastest of the lightweight themes, with a 93/100 on mobile and a 2.1s page load.  

• Avada (with its own builder) also makes it to the top of the list with an 86/100 on mobile and a 2.8s page load.  

How We Tested the Themes

Our selection was based on 2025 popularity, high numbers of downloads or sales on Envato, and quality reviews. Then, we run an audit through PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix. These performance tools are powered by Lighthouse, and both analyze your website’s performance and user experience. The most important KPIs are the Core Web Vitals which come with a detailed report about how your pages perform and which optimizations you should focus on. That’s why we have included the 10 following metrics in our tests – all 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 13 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 

• Hestia  

• Neve 

#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) 

• Themify (Themify builder) 

• Beaver Builder Theme (with Beaver Builder Installed) 

The Testing Sites 

For the first category, we built a realistic test site using the WordPress Editor. We used the blocks to create a hero banner with a button, five testimonials with pictures, one call to action (a full section with an image), four icons and text, two titles and two subtitles, and eight 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, three services with icons and texts, two images (we re-used the same), two text elements, three icon lists, and a call to action section with a header, sub-header and button (full section).  

We could conduct a fair performance comparison analysis by following the same testing scenarios and the same content for each theme. 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 the easiest and most powerful performance plugin for WordPress, and it can optimize any theme without knowing how to code. Upon activation, it also improves the performance of your site and your Core Web Vitals by applying 80% of the performance best practices! 

To understand the significant impact of WP Rocket on speed, let’s see it in action with the7 theme, which was the “slowest” theme in our tests with a 4.1s loading time.  

For the record, there were a few issues flagged by Lighthouse, listed under the “Opportunities” tab:

he recommendations include using caching, minifying CSS, reducing JavaScript execution time and reducing unused CSS/JS. 

Key Takeaways When Using WP Rocket 

We activated WP Rocket on that test site, tweaked a few options and we noticed a big boost in performance.   

First, our performance KPIs got better thanks to WP Rocket, which also improved the PageSpeed Insights score. In fact, our site achieved a 98/100 grade. WP Rocket also improved the Core Web Vitals score and decreased the total loading time (from 4.1s to 2.1s).  

WP Rocket also helped reduce the page size (from 1.4MB to 780KB) and the number of HTTP requests (from 16 to 8). 

Finally, we fixed the main issues reported in the PageSpeed Insights audit:  

Here’s a visual recap to see the performance results before and after using WP Rocket: 

*Core Web Vitals 

Want to know which features of WP Rocket we used to get such a performance boost?  

Some options are activated by default after the plugin is activated, and others need to be activated manually to improve performance even more. Let’s go over each of them so you can also use them on your WordPress site and boost your page speed. 

Performance features automatically activated upon WP Rocket’s activation:   

• Caching means WP Rocket stores a temporary copy of your website’s pages. When visitors return or navigate, the pages load much faster without repeatedly generating them from scratch. 

• GZIP compression shrinks your website files (like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) before sending them to a visitor’s browser, making them load quicker. It’s similar to compressing a large file into a smaller zip file for faster transfer. 

• Code minification reduces the size of CSS and JavaScript files by removing unnecessary characters, like trimming a document of extra spaces and comments to make it smaller and faster to read. 

• Critical image optimization automatically detects and prioritizes key images above the fold, such as the main product photo on a homepage, so it loads immediately while other images load later. This feature helps improving the Largest Contenful Paint (LCP) when it is an image.  

• Automatic lazy rendering delays the loading of elements further down the page, similar to a blog post where only the visible part loads first, and images below appear as you scroll. This feature improves user experience and the perceived speed, also boosting the Interaction to Next Paint grade, especially on mobile. 

WP Rocket’s features we activated manually: 

• Remove unused CSS and optimize CSS delivery: WP Rocket removes unnecessary CSS code from your website while ensuring the essential CSS loads quickly.  

• Loading JavaScript deferred: It delays the loading of JavaScript files until the rest of the page’s content has loaded, preventing them from blocking the display of your site.  

• Delaying JavaScript execution: It postpones the execution of JavaScript files until user interaction (e.g., clicking on a button). 

Best Fast Themes Suggested For You 

It’s almost impossible to suggest one single theme as it depends on your specific needs and your client brief, but here are a few takeaways: 

• If a client is willing to take over his website, update the content, and access the WordPress dashboard, 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 exceptionally designed demos for different industries, Avada, Divi, Astra and BeTheme may be your best choices. You will not need to tweak your theme so much as the pre-built templates are very well done.  

• If you plan on creating an advanced WooCommerce site with thousands of products, a lightweight theme like Astra or OceanWP may be wiser. Plus, it comes with advanced WooCommerce features and they are compatible with major WooCommerce builders.  

• If you need to create your own forms, and product layouts and add dynamic data to your website, then a theme compatible or 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 product template and shop page quickly.  

• If you are a web and design agency, Divi offers the Divi Cloud, where you can easily store and share your project with the team. Collaboration and potential modifications can be done faster everywhere. 

• If you are looking for a simple, lightweight theme with the WordPress editor and not necessarily a page builder, Astra, Neve or Hestia are a great option thanks to the pre-made patterns (price list, testimonials, service blocks). 

• If you want to customize your site fully and have the power of Page Builder for your site’s headers and footers, then Beaver Builder, Divi, and Avada are your best allies. 

• 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. 

Finally, choose a theme with fast support, recent updates, and accurate documentation. For example, OceanWP has an academy that offers webinars and tutorials on using the theme to its fullest.  

Wrapping up 

Now, you should be able to 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 help passing the performance audit on PageSpeed Insights.  

Try WP Rocket today and it’s risk-free with the 14-day money-back guarantee! Test it with different themes and experience the incredible boost in performance.