18 Feb Top 20+ Fastest Loading WordPress Themes 2021 Tested
If your website does not load faster enough, it’s highly likely that your visitors might decide to leave rather than wait to view the pages. Whether you are looking to gain more subscribers or boost sales, every minute counts. Using the fastest WordPress themes will significantly boost your efforts.
Speed is an important factor in creating a seamless user experience and has a lot of impact on your site conversions. Speed also plays a major factor in determining whether your website will rank highly in google. Fortunately, there are many fast WordPress themes that can help you achieve your goals.
In this article, we have listed 15+ of the fastest themes for WordPress. Let’s Go!!
The need of Fastest WordPress Themes is always there when the competition out in the world is simply cut-throat. If a blogger strives to be successful in the virtual world, then one must use swiftly loading themes so that the visitors to his/her website could come back often. Also, you must take care of the niche before choosing a WordPress theme so that your page loads with the utmost speed against your competitors. And for that purpose, we’re about to share some best-in-industry options from the popular niches that can serve you well with their features and options. So, here below are some Fastest WordPress Themes for you.
The templates discussed below can assist you to build a custom and fast WordPress site, regardless of your budget, firm goals, or technical experience.
Before we start describing these themes individually, it’s wise to note that we will include load time data in every section. The data was collected by running the demo website of every template via the online device Webpage Test. The values indicated are the complete loaded results.
Table of Contents
Mogo
Mogo is an option available for showing all your development in one place. However, the theme is suitable for the software purpose and not for all. It comes with the features like one-click install, detailed documentation, lifetime free support & updates, unlimited color schemes & backgrounds, 600+ Google fonts, parallax scrolling, HTML5 and CSS3 based code, SEO optimization ready, translation support, very light to make the loading speed even better and much more.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 92/100
- Tested on Mobile: 72/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests:34
- Load time: 455ms
- Page size: 548.0kB
Faster than 98% of all tested websites
Sunshine
As the name sounds, Sunshine is surely the best options to choose from the pool that says we’re the Fastest WordPress Themes available here. The theme comes with features like inbuilt review system, fluid responsive design. The list doesn’t end there you also get a truly awesome loading speed, made to match SEO demands, user-engaging clean and clear design, Google Adsense optimized many styling options. Oh and a floating navigation menu and unlimited backgrounds with colors to let you fill your imagination the way want it. Being a modern day theme, it’s compatible with all the latest day browsers and the touch slider is also available for the mobile users as well.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 92/100
- Tested on Mobile: 79/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests:52
- Load time: 534ms
- Page size: 628.2kB
Faster than 97% of all tested websites
TheGem
If you want a magazine that the is free fast loading then consider TheGem, it’s 100% free forever no upsells. Built on Bootstrap v3 framework, TheGem is responsive mobile friendly to help your search rank in Google. What we love about this theme is the layout and attention to detail, the feature post slider allows you to promote your most popular post to help with your bounce rate.
The idea behind TheGem is to help you keep users on your site longer and improve your click through rate. We have created the default post page full screen to avoid unnecessary distraction from the side. Let’s look at how this theme stacks up alongside these templates on offer.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 86/100
- Tested on Mobile: 63/100
Suggested fix: Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Pingdom test:
- Requests:44
- Load time: 847ms
- Page size: 826.9KB
Faster than 92% of all tested websites
CheerUp
Looking for a Genesis child theme that supports parallax scrolling? Then, CheerUp is for you as it is completely build using the Genesis framework. And once a theme is built using the Genesis framework, it acquires the tag of awesomeness!
The theme comes with a completely optimized code for the web. Page loading speed is the fastest and SEO is completely integrated into the theme, giving websites using CheerUp advantage over the other WordPress themes.
The theme comes with several pre-made color styles – green, orange, blue, red and pink. All the variations come with amazing typography. Good typography is necessary for website success, and the theme delivers just that!
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 89/100
- Tested on Mobile: 76/100
Pingdom test:
- Tested from Amsterdam
- Load time 925ms
- Requests 18
- Page Size 820.9kB
Faster than 91% of all tested websites
Rosa
If you’re about to open a restaurant related website and looking for the best and Fastest WordPress Themes, then this Rosa theme could be the end of your search. It includes features like parallax scrolling, different product menus, shortcodes for the title, descriptions, prices and images of your dishes, a customized shortcode for the online reservation, Woo-Commerce compatible, responsive and mobile ready design, SEO ready, clean and modern code to make the live page better and others as well. The theme costs around $75. Also, you can check the demo from the below link.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 55/100
- Tested on Mobile: 65/100
Suggested fix: Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Pingdom test:
- Requests:54
- Load time: 1.04s
- Page size: 2.7MB
Faster than 89% of all tested websites
Okab
Okab is the theme developed for creating a micro job website and is surely one of the Fastest WordPress Themes available in the market. It comes with many options that are visitors oriented to make them visit back more often. The features include customization visitor or user dashboard, sleek, and modern design, based on foundation framework and for the rest, please check out the link.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 87/100
- Tested on Mobile: 74/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests:67
- Load time: 2.17s
- Page size: 625.0kB
Faster than 89% of all tested websites
Diamond
Diamond WordPress Theme is known as the option available for the small business owners and other bloggers who require Woo-Commerce support. The theme is best popular as one of the Fastest WordPress Themes available with the features like ZOOM framework, Woo-Commerce integration, many homepage layouts, responsive design, parallax slider, one-click widgets install and others.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 86/100
- Tested on Mobile: 73/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests:76
- Load time: 1.23s
- Page size: 2.1MB
Faster than 86% of all tested websites
Genesis Framework
Created by StudioPress the Genesis framework as been one of the most popular frameworks and is widely used by many high profile bloggers. This theme as been featured in several of our collections one including the best search optimized themes. With a numerous amount of child themes to choose from and the ease of use, we are happy to recommend any of the Genesis child themes.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 68/100
- Tested on Mobile: 58/100
Suggested fix: optimize images.
Pingdom test:
- Requests: 10
- Load time: 1.26s
- Page size: 491.4kB
Your website is faster than 85% of all tested websites
Divi
Nexus is best suitable Fastest WordPress Theme for a magazine type blog or website. The other options available with this theme are secure coding, cross–browser compatibility, localization support, specific advertisement area, custom widgets, homepage builder, responsive design and easy to use shortcodes as well. The layout is also very clean and with the grid post option to make it look good on the desktop or mobile screen.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 86/100
- Tested on Mobile: 72/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests: 153
- Load time: 1.88s
- Page size: 7.4MB
Faster than 74% of all tested websites
Avada
Avada is the most popular multipurpose theme from ThemeFusion, it is one of the best selling themes on ThemeForest of all time. The theme is packed with features and yet it is one of the fatest loading WordPress themes, no wonder it is being used by so many website owners and web designers for their clients. It comes with responsive layout, unlimited designs, powerful theme options, intuitive tools, incredible support and much more.
Google PageSpeed Insights Score: 87
Pingdom Tools Score: 81
Schema
Schema is on the list of Fastest WordPress Themes not only because it gets loaded faster than many other themes, but for the hell lot of features it comes with. It’s one of the most SEO and search engine friendly themes available in the market, which tells the search engine crawlers about your blog’s every part and its use, like for example, it tells the difference between title and subtitle, post title, sidebars and sidebar items. The other general features of it are responsive design, better ad management and rest you can check the below link.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 92/100
- Tested on Mobile: 79/100
Pingdom test:
- Tested from Amsterdam
- Load time 2.18s
- Requests 58
- Page size 1.3MB
Faster than 68% of all tested websites
SEO WP
SEO WP is a powerful and fast loading WordPress theme with elegant design. The theme is quite flexible and is specially designed for creative agencies, digital marketing agencies, SEO companies and their clients. Also, the theme comes with multiple premium plugins such as Rankie, Master Slider, Simplified Google Maps, NEX-Forms, Fresh Favicon and many more. The theme is feature rich with features like drag and drop builder, multiple layouts with background options, live theme customizer, unlimited header styles, advanced typography setting, 1 click demo content, social media integration and much more.
Google PageSpeed Insights Score: 82
Pingdom Tools Score: 81
X-The Theme
X-The Theme is regarded as one of the Fastest WordPress Theme available in the market till now. Many blogs and famous professionals have praised this for the features and options it provides. The important features of this theme include mega menus, SEO optimization, search options, W3C compatible, boxed and wide layouts, fluid framework, custom sidebars, unique portfolios, Woo-Commerce ready, social plugin included, responsive and retina ready design and much more! Check out the link below if you don’t believe us.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 72/100
- Tested on Mobile: 58/100
Suggested fix: optimize images and leverage browser caching
Pingdom test:
- Requests:61
- Load time: 3.60s
- Page size: 1.8MB
Faster than 46% of all tested websites
Vodoma
Vodoma is one of the fastest WooCommerce themes available in the market with tons of features in it. The theme comes with a responsive design so it won’t let your website fail to load properly on mobile devices and potentially lose a customer. The other features on it include a 13+ pre-built website templates, Ajax search and filters, product labels and countdowns, video tutorials, free slider revolution plugin, WPML multilingual compatible, unlimited colors and much more. You can even choose from 6 types of customizable product category pages with quick view and wishlists.
Swift Themes
Swift themes as been long known for it’s WordPress themes focus on themes. If someone ask me a year back, what fast WP theme can I recommend I would have mentioned this theme due to the dated design. However for 2015 and beyond the v7 version is modern that will install trust in users and keep them on site for longer. You do get a lot of customization option but if you are a newbie the whole process can be daunting. The recent version release saw the introduction of a well-crafted newspaper template. Overall it is a great choice for a magazine, blogs, and personal blogs. What I like most about this theme is the lazy load incorporated within the theme.
They also have a free version that might be worth checking out first to get use to the theme options area.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 84/100
- Tested on Mobile: 90/100
Pingdom test:
- Load time 792ms
- Requests 35
- Page Size 907.8kB
Nexio
The Nexio is regarded as one of the SEO friendly and Fastest WordPress Themes ever developed and available today. It has many features like integrated social media sharing buttons, snippet support, inbuilt SEO settings, completely responsive design, live customization, ADSENSE ready and management. The user-interface is also immaculate and modern so that even rookies feel like professionals while working on it.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 85/100
- Tested on Mobile: 70/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests: 42
- Load time: 974ms
- Page size: 868.6kB
Pixova Lite
Pixova Lite is a well coded WordPress theme recently voted by the 85ideas readers as one of the best one page theme on the market. Although it is not the faster, it is packed with great features for those starting an online business. By installing a caching plugin like WP rocket you can easily increase your site’s loading time for a better user experience.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 89/100
- Tested on Mobile: 74/100
Pingdom test:
- Load time 1.21s
- Requests 44
- Page Size 812.4kB
News Theme
The News Theme is a lightweight and fast loading theme from ThemeShop, it is a corporate portfolio theme specially designed to showcase your work. News Theme is highly customizable, responsive and has two layouts; default and blog. The theme has the ability to showcase a single app, projects, services and testimonials. The feature of the theme includes parallax scrolling, unlimited color schemes, unlimited backgrounds, translation ready and much more.
Google PageSpeed Insights Score: 83
Pingdom Tools Score: 85
Bimber
This is the most popular WordPress theme having an ideal layout for online magazines as well as other content-rich websites.
Bimber provides you with twenty ready-to-utilize demos to select from. Each design is perfect for arranging huge amounts of content and attracting more users. Because this template comes integrated with the Visual Composer plugin, it allows you to build a custom layout for your website speedily without any coding.
This template is perfectly customized for mobile devices, SEO-friendly, and super quick, ensuring that your content achieves a high ranking in search engine results.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 95/100
- Tested on Mobile: 84/100
Pingdom test:
- Load time 1.01s
- Requests 46
- Page Size 912.4kB
Astra
This is one of the most popular fastest WordPress themes. Astra is perfectly optimized for performance through the elimination of jQuery dependencies that often cause the delay. Also, it allows you to choose individual modules that you can include on your website so that you can easily edit your website content more efficiently.
This fast WordPress theme features a real-time customize so that you can also create a fast website. the theme is fully integrated with the best page builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor. Also, the theme is packed with a wide range of demos and many customizable elements such as the header design options.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 89/100
- Tested on Mobile: 71/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests: 163
- Load time: 1.08s
- Page size: 7.9MB
Hestia
Our final recommendation is Hestia, a slick single-page theme that utilizes Material Design principles. The theme boasts simplicity while at the same time being highly flexible. Hestia live customizer makes it ideal for both beginners and advanced website designers
Moreover, Hestia works perfectly with page builders like Divi, Beaver Builder, and Elementor. Also, Hestia has a lightweight structure that is a perfect match for some of the most popular plugins like WooCommerce. Keep in mind that the theme is SEO ready. Therefore, you can rest assured that all search engines will love your website.
Speed test results:
- Tested on Desktop: 82/100
- Tested on Mobile: 79/100
Pingdom test:
- Requests: 198
- Load time: 1.88s
- Page size: 7.4MB
Final Overview of Fastest WordPress Themes
There certainly could be many more options available in the market apart from the ones mentioned above, and you can choose them if fitted well. Still, the collection listed above has almost every fastest WordPress themes, which are popular in the market and cover many of the niches. But, you can share other fantastic themes you’re using with us in the comment section below and let us know your thoughts/ questions if you have any.
If you’re just starting, then let me make it very clear that this isn’t an easy way. People take internet marketing as a part-time business but still they need to invest a lot of money first (To learn things and gain experience) and also have to give regular time.
Note: Hey all Brian here, so I personally tested the templates mentioned above using Google page speed tester and Pingdom Website Speed Test. I would live to take a minute to recommend you all to check out WPSpeedster, which to date as tested over 2500 free themes. Another interesting read is the dareboost article that lists 50 popular themes and their speed result.
Wrapping Up
I have tried to mention some of the fastest loading WordPress themes here, the themes included are feature rich, multipurpose themes with the latest design trends and can be used to create many kinds of websites. This is not a comprehensive list and there are certainly many more options in the market. If you’re using a fast loading theme and you think it deserves a mention here, let us know in the comments section below.
For your convenience here is the top ten fastest themes according to dareboost test:
THEME | SCORE | WEIGHT | LOADTIME |
SEO WP | 82 | 0.94 MB | 1.23 sec |
Oyster light skin | 76 | 1.04 MB | 1.54 sec |
BuildPress | 79 | 0.95 MB | 1.77 sec |
North | 69 | 2.15 MB | 2.42 sec |
Newsmag | 76 | 1.17 MB | 2.46 sec |
KON/CEPT | 74 | 0.90 MB | 2.53 sec |
Pluto Clean Personal | 81 | 1.41 MB | 3.03 sec |
Realty | 74 | 1.73 MB | 3.34 sec |
Lawyer Attorney | 65 | 1.31 MB | 3.65 sec |
Zephyr | 72 | 2.71 MB | 3.77 sec |
*last updated 02/18/2021 at 7:18:41 PM
Peter Tiedemann
Posted at 19:51h, 17 JuneHow did you test these? Do you have any load time and performance benchmarks? Please share the details.
Brian H
Posted at 23:30h, 12 JulyHi Peter,
Sorry for the delay I have spoken to Prashant, who had to take a break for personal reasons. You said at the time he used Google PageSpeed insights. I will update this article to reflect this, I also plan to run a few other tests that will be live within 24hrs. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
DareBoost
Posted at 11:23h, 24 JuneGreat post! You might be interested in our latest post about the speed and quality of the Top 50 Most Sold WordPress Themes : blog.dareboost.com/en/2015/06/are-the-50-most-sold-wordpress-themes-fast-enough/
Brian H
Posted at 23:35h, 12 JulyHi,
Great resource I love you way your site displays the individual test 🙂
Ionut Neagu
Posted at 00:55h, 11 JulyHey Brian,
We did another study at codeinwp and here is what we got…
Brian H
Posted at 23:41h, 12 JulyHi Ionut,
Great round, it’s well put together I’ve tweeted it 🙂
thomasusborne
Posted at 17:56h, 11 SeptemberGeneratePress’ test scores are pretty impressive in this area as well.
Tested on Desktop: 93/100
Tested on Mobile: 79/100
98/100 on Pingdom
17 requests
840ms load time
194.1 kb page size
Brian H
Posted at 13:21h, 25 SeptemberHey Thomas, That is pretty fast 🙂 I will keep it in mind for our next update.
thomasusborne
Posted at 19:44h, 18 MarchYou might consider testing all of these themes with no content/images – it gives a better idea of the speed of the actual theme as opposed to the optimization of the images and content in the demo which doesn’t really have anything to do with the theme. Just my opinion 🙂
jonericson
Posted at 10:17h, 18 MarchNice, but I just ran a test on the demo at http://demo.generatepress.com/.
PageSpeed/YSlow score of 88/81. Still high, but not in the 90’s.
jonericson
Posted at 10:19h, 18 MarchAlso, the URL you posted (speedtest.generatepress.com) is 404.
thomasusborne
Posted at 19:41h, 18 MarchThe demo has quite a few plugins installed which brings the score down. I just brought http://speedtest.generatepress.com over to our new server (thanks for the reminder). Completely default installation of WP and GP (with query strings removed).
99/100 on Pingdom
16 requests
514ms load time
143.1 kb page size
Tested on the Dallas server.
Of course, production sites with images and plugins will differ, but this shows the quality of the base theme 🙂
Chandan
Posted at 03:40h, 06 FebruaryI am using Swift theme. It is one of the fastest theme I have ever used.
EppK
Posted at 00:08h, 11 AprilOh my, I wish I had more sites to test all of these! They are amazing! When I was struggling with my WP site, I found my quick fix from here: . They have the speed index calculated VERY accurately, not to even mention factually pointed out TTFB. Thank god we have so many resources out there, teaching how to make your WP site run smoother. If anyone else cares for it, then you could also take a look at this good advice for enhancing WP site: http://www.copyblogger.com/make-wordpress-faster/ . In the end, it all comes down to some cleaning up! Even me, a not so tech-savy person, managed to boost my visitors user experience by a ton as after implementing these changes, my bounce rate went much lower. Good luck to everyone!
Thierry
Posted at 13:43h, 01 JuneHey folks,
I would suggest to add Beans Theme to the list, (which are both built with Beans Theme Framework) on GTMetrix, Pindgdom etc.
I think it truly diverses to be in the list of one the fastest loading themes (if not the fastest) 😉
Cheers,
Editorial Staff
Posted at 22:43h, 06 JuneIf you would like a theme added to our list, please visit our Advertising page for more information. Thanks!
ropema granito
Posted at 13:15h, 03 MayHello, I think your blog might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping.
I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, amazing blog!
sasirdd
Posted at 00:36h, 25 SeptemberThanks for sharing this post. Helpful and Informative.
Mount Woods
Posted at 05:26h, 04 OctoberGreat post and thanks for sharing such valuable information with us all. As a website’s speed is considered one of the key factors affecting the SEO so you must optimize it;’s speed by various processes and one such process is choosing the theme that is best suited for your website and load more quickly than others. By providing the list of such sites you’ve done most of the work for most of the people out there. Nice work keep it up.
al maruf
Posted at 08:42h, 06 Octoberi need a news paper theme for my company Saunatown.
please suggest the best one
Juma Rasuli
Posted at 05:21h, 08 Octoberyour post is about something quite different from other titles and is very useful as well
anish
Posted at 06:14h, 29 DecemberThank you for sharing this information