Are you a newbie, having no coding knowledge, no tech know-how about online presence and you are planning to build a website?? If so, then here, we have listed the best free wordpress themes for you that you can use to create a website without any developer.
Whether it’s a personal blog, business website, professional portfolio, or an online store, the right wordpress theme can make all the difference.
Think of it like the clothes your website wears!! It simply reflects your style, makes your site easy to use, and leaves a lasting impression on visitors.
Now, what if you don’t want to spend money on a premium theme? Do not worry! There are plenty of amazing free WordPress themes out there that look fantastic and perform just as well as paid ones.
Just imagine that you’re starting a travel blog. You want a theme that feels fresh and adventurous, with beautiful layouts for photos and easy navigation for your readers. The right free wordpress theme can give your blog that vibe instantly. Plus you don’t even have to hire a web designer to do so!
In this article, we’ll explore 11 of the best free WordPress themes that are not only stylish but also fast, mobile-friendly, and customizable. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced website owner, these themes are packed with features to help you build your dream site, without spending extra time.
So, without any more delays, let’s dive in! 🚀
Short of Time!! Here is a table of the best 11 free wordpress themes about its Level of Customization, Loading Speed Time and its mobile-friendliness as well.
Theme | Customization | Speed (LoadingTime) | Mobile Responsive |
---|---|---|---|
GeneratePress | High | 277.10ms to 1s | Yes |
Astra | High | 250.18ms to 1s | Yes |
Kadence | High | 377.92ms to 1s | Yes |
OceanWP | High | 490-510.90ms to 1s | Yes |
Neve | Moderate | 298ms to 1s | Yes |
Sydney | Moderate | 210ms to 1s | Yes |
Blocksy | High | 310ms to 1s | Yes |
Zakra | Moderate | Less than 1s | Yes |
Responsive | High | 200ms to 1s | Yes |
Spectra One | High | 481ms to 1s | Yes |
Rishi Theme | Moderate to Low | 200ms to 1s | Yes |
Also Read: Best Free Shopify Themes
11 Best Free WordPress Themes 10th December 2024– Top Picked
Now that we got a brief idea about what free wordpress theme is, below we have listed the best wordpress themes that gives your website everything from exclusive responsiveness, greater SEO for your website, endless customization option without any coding requirement,
⏰ TL;DR:
1. GeneratePress – Overall Best Free WordPress Theme
2. Astra – Fast, Fully Customizable & Beautiful WordPress Theme
3. Kadence – Best Free Professional WordPress Themes
4. OceanWP – Best Free Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
5. Neve – Best Free WordPress Theme For Small Business
6. Sydney – Beautiful and Easily Customizable WordPress Theme
7. Blocksy – Lightning Fast, and Super Charged WordPress Theme
8. Zakra – Strong Free WordPress Multipurpose Theme
9. Responsive – Fast, Lightweight, & Fully Customizable WordPress Theme
10. Spectra One – Modern, Versatile, and Free WordPress Theme
11. Rishi Theme – Fastest Free WordPress Theme
1. GeneratePress – Overall Best Free WordPress Theme
Now, as far as speed and accessibility is concerned, GeneratePress comes first in the list of the best free wordpress themes!! Ever heard of 100% PageSpeed scores? Here, your webpage size remains within 7.5KB ensuring zero lagging and best loading speed.
Moreover, you can add even more features to the theme for optimal website performance. You have an amazing local font library where you can directly upload your content font. Plus, get a chance to use a tool named infinite scroll on your blog archives. Even build or design your theme element using block editor.
If you get stuck with the complications involved in building a website page and all, then you can contact the WordPress expert via LiveChat as well.
Top Features
- Multiple device Responsive themes: GeneratePress themes are compatible with all the devices including tablet, laptop, PC, mobile giving easy surfing experience.
- Local Font Library: An amazing feature of GeneratePress!! You can easily upload your own custom fonts to use on your website. (Get it directly from GoogleFonts)
- Pre-designed patterns: Get around 200+ (Only with the GeneratePress Premium plans) and limited pre-designed themes for your website as per the genre.
- Drag & Drop Page Building: Do not need to make even an ounce of effort. Just simply one click, then drag and drop the feature where you like on the page.
- Build your pages: Customize your web pages professionally!! Elevate the standard of security, speed and stability of your wordpress website based on the codes.
2. Astra – Fast, Fully Customizable & Beautiful WordPress Theme
If you talk about lightweight wordpress themes, then Astra should surely be in discussion, as here, firstly the speed is awesome due to its less page storage and secondly you can even customize the wordpress website using coding skills.
Now let’s say you have a blog site, then you can easily control the design of your blog posts & archive pages with quick customization options, allowing you to manage content and even meta. Astra even happens to be the largest library of pre-designed wordpress website themes, thanks to the starter template plugin, Quickly import the website theme that suits your niche.
Top Features
- Header Footer Builder: Get engaging header and footers with a simple drag and drop feature that lets you pick the element you need for your website.
- Live Editing: Astra lets you preview your webpage, before you plan to put it live. Make necessary changes to your HomePage, add new elements, customize the color and font too.
- Advanced Styling option: Get unlimited option to add more styling features to your website pages including color, layouts and even add logo to your website.
- Mobile Responsive boosting SEO: Always remember! The more responsive the website is to multiple devices, the better SEO you get for your website ensuring higher search engine ranks.
- Extensive PageBuilders: Many pageBuilders including BeaverBuilder, Elementor and SiteOrigin are partnered with Astra for easy and customisable plus free of cost wordpress page designs.
3. Kadence – Best Free Professional WordPress Themes
Here, you get an AI website builder that has not only saved time but also made website builder’s work much easier! Kadence, one of the best free wordpress theme providers, offers a powerful wordpress plugin that ensures seamless wordpress website development.
Plus you get an easy option to check a website’s responsiveness in other devices including tablets, PCs, mobile, chromebook, giving greater SEOs as well. Right from advanced header footer builders to extensive color and font settings, it allows unlimited customization without any requirement of coding knowledge.
Wanting to create engaging layouts and stylish elements? If so, then blindly you should go for Kadence.
Top Features
- AI website building: For newbies out there! And the beginners, who have just started with website building can use the potential of AI to create amazing themes.
- 10+ website builder plugin installer: Plugins including Woocommerce, elementor, beaver builder and others are installed in just a single click.
- Customize your header: Tired of the same header styles?? Do not worry. As here, you can customize your header and footer of the website.
- Multiple device responsiveness: You can imagine that your website would run on different devices!! Since its true, Kadence offers mobile responsive features.
- Advanced Theme features: If we mention advanced themes, from adding social links to color or layout options, get all to set your website using advanced features.
4. OceanWP – Best Free Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
It sometimes happens that the online project you have in mind, let’s just say photography, the theme for the photography website is not available!!
So, in a case like this, OceanWP is one of the best free wordpress themes that offers better, faster and hassle-free themes friendly for all sorts of projects be it education, portfolio or large scale business too. If you are a newbie and do not know how to build your website, then you can use the amazing drag and drop website building features to customize your website.
Along with that OceanWP offers 1.5K+ global fonts and advanced styling to give your website an amazing look.
Top Features
- OceanWP panel: Control panel of OceanWP makes website building a piece of cake!! Install plugins and themes in just a single click and get a user-friendly interface.
- Icons and Shortcodes: Using this feature of OceanWP you can embed social media menus, header icons and even get an entire shortcode library for website customization.
- Incredible website layouts: From adjustable containers, content widths to website layouts advanced styles, OceanWP offers you every hook and nook to boost your website’s look.
- Highly customized page features: Page features that includes mega menu, link effects, header menu, style and search button to highly change the appearance of your website and make it look more engaging.
- Freemium website templates: Here, at OceanWP, you get around 17+ Freemium website templates that are online project friendly and even eye-catchy as well.
5. Neve – Best Free WordPress Theme For Small Business
Best for blog sites, e-commerce sites, and startups, Neve offers lightning fast website performance and responsiveness at every screen size. It offers a very easy and sleek design that is understandable plus engaging at the same time.
And especially for those who want to develop their wordpress website in their own way, Neve offers good quality code with full tech support.
And what about the website size and speed?? So, here at Neve, website speed is the top priority and wordpress default install is of 28KB plus website loads in just 0.6s.
Top Features
- Custom design for header and footer: Get easy option to design and re-design the header and footer using the drag and drop feature of Neve.
- Global Color palettes: You have multiple color palettes to choose from for your wordpress website in order to make it more engaging and create a consistent design across the website.
- Neve’s starter site library: Neve’s starter sites library allows you to import a ready-made website theme along with that, new wordpress website designs are even updated to the collections.
- Elementor Booster: You even get the elementor booster module that offers 7+ best freemium widgets, content protection, animations to help you create an interactive page in less time.
- Content Restriction module: Neve offers the best way to manage your content accessibility whereby you decide who gets to access your pages, web stories and posts.
6. Sydney – Beautiful and Easily Customizable WordPress Theme
Fully compatible with elementor, Sydney happens to be the best for business type websites that gives more importance to speed and accessibility leading to more conversion rates.
Here, you can re-customize your header for laptops, PCs and mobile screens (get 8+ header presets). Plus, you can choose your own color, and even can customize the color and font, thanks to the global font library. With Sydney, you get to choose from different layouts, and even can use the widgets you think can make your website look jaw-dropping.
And last but not the least, you can get access to Sydney studio, where you get pre-designed layouts and sections as well.
Top Features
- Create Multiple Sidebars: Add sidebars to your website for easy navigation and even engage your visitors with built-in post sharing features.
- Seamless WordPress integrations: Get extra WooCommerce features for your business website like wishlist, single stop checkouts and cart page and many more wordpress integrations too.
- Screen-friendly website layouts: For every screen size including mobile, laptops, tables and chromebook, get a layout for your wordpress website that fits everywhere.
- Extended header and footer module: From header login button to footer’s background image get highly customized website layouts plus get advanced plugins for more options.
- Extra elementor widgets: One of the best ways to enhance your website layout, Elementor, here offers you timeline, heading and pricing widget for an advanced look.
7. Blocksy – Lightning Fast, and Super Charged WordPress Theme
Next in the list, we have Blocksy, one of the fast and free wordpress themes that offers much more innovative options even for newbies having no idea about coding and all.
It even gives you an e-commerce ready website layout, best for you if you are planning to open up an online store. As far as the developers are concerned, they get a seamless way to change the codes as per the design requirement.
Plus you get an option to preview your wordpress website layout before actually putting it live for your visitors of the website.
If you feel that your website is looking boring, you can change the font, color and style to meet the new trendy layout theme.
Top Features
- Incredible PageBuilders: It is built and designed to work with the best WordPress page builders including gutenberg, elementor, beaver builder and more.
- Customize header footer and sidebars: Get 9+ header elements to choose from and create the type of header, footer and sidebars to really fit the latest website trend.
- Upgrade background and add colors: Blocksy gives you an easy way to manage and access your color option including multiple color palettes for a better website look.
- Advanced topography options: From more than 900+ Global Fonts to typekit, get everything to customize the text look to attract more eyes and lead to greater engagement.
- Modern layouts: It comes with 5+ modern and clean archive layout that helps you settle the website’s look to engage more audience in a single view.
8. Zakra – Strong Free WordPress Multipurpose Theme
Here, at Zakra you get an amazing interface to design your wordpress website seamlessly, like you can select preferred layout for your website’s pages, posts, sidebar, and blogs.
Moreover, you can explore various container layouts like wide, boxed, separate, and even much more to extremely customize your site’s appearance. And not only that, you even have this wonderful range of color palette within the wordpress theme.
You can choose the color option that perfectly matches your brand’s identity, ensuring an engaging website that converts your audience to clients.
Top Features
- 10+ Advanced WordPress tools: Best option to enhance the site’s functionality, Zakra offers multiple WP tools to help you to optimize your website like boosting SEO and all.
- Lightening fast website performance: If you have a blog website, then in that case, here, your website gets loaded faster and ensures peace of mind among your visitors.
- Unlimited Color Palettes: You have different color options for your footer background and header layout to elevate the appearance of your website.
- Customizable header and footer: Get amazing header top bar, multiple layouts, setting options and dynamic footer layouts and even explore various containers to boost your site.
- Flexible layouts: You can use the modern archive layout options to customize your site’s menu’s color and design to meet your business needs.
9. Responsive – Fast, Lightweight, & Fully Customizable WordPress Theme
This free wordpress theme takes care that your website layout fits all screen sizes plus it’s even fast and customizable in terms of fort, color layout and header footer background.
It even takes care of your website’s SEO by ensuring that your website ranks high in search engines when searched due to quick page loading speed and high quality content as well. If you are starting your online store, then this is the best option for you as Responsive wordpress themes integrate around 10+ advanced tools for greater website appearance.
Get multiple device responsive website layout, thanks to Responsive advanced modern theme options and e-commerce editor styles that ensures your website fits all screens.
Top Features
- Multiple advanced layouts: You can choose from among the advanced layout options to elevate the performance and the look of your website as per the need.
- Header and Footer Backgrounds: To make the information of your website look more customized, you can add an engaging header and footer background as well.
- Highly optimized for good SEO: SEO is the need of the hour, especially when it is a blogging website!! So, here, responsive wordpress themes ensure that your page size is the least and speed is awesome.
- Attractive Widgets: You can easily drag and drop the widgets that you like and place it on the website to make it look more engaging.
- High speed and accessibility: Speed and accessibility are related to each other!! If your website has high responsive speed then, it’ll be highly accessible too.
10. Spectra One – Modern, Versatile, and Free WordPress Theme
If you’re looking for a lightweight WordPress theme, SpectraOne absolutely deserves a place in this discussion. Its blazing-fast performance, optimized code and minimal page load, gives your website a serious speed boost.
Plus, if you’ve got some coding skills for real, SpectraOne offers the flexibility to customize your site with custom coding. For bloggers, this wordpress theme is the best! You get total control over your blog posts and archive pages with quick and easy customization options. Adjust layouts, manage metadata, and shape your content just the way you want.
Top Features
- Drag ‘n’ Drop: You can easily create and redesign your website’s header and footer with SpectraOne’s drag-and-drop builder. You can even adjust elements in real-time.
- WooCommerce integration: Boost your business website with advanced WooCommerce features, including wishlist functionality, streamlined checkouts, and enhanced cart pages.
- Mobile friendly websites: Let’s say your visitors are on mobile, tablets, laptops, or Chromebooks, SpectraOne’s screen-friendly layouts ensure your website looks stunning and functions perfectly across all devices.
- Multiple Global fonts & Modern Topography: Customize your site’s text with multiple global fonts and modern typography themes.
- Unlimited Color option: You can elevate your site’s appearance with unlimited color options for your header and footer and unique color combinations to create a design that matches your brand identity.
11. Rishi Theme – Fasted Free WordPress Theme
Lastly, we have Rishi WordPress theme builder that delivers lightning-fast load times, clocking in under 500ms. It is known to be consistent and even outperforms others on metrics from PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
It even guarantees top-tier speed grades for both desktop and mobile users. Building a website is never that easy! Rishi even offers a wide collection of starter templates that can be imported in just a single click. It is perfect for launching your site in no time, be it’s a blog, online store, or a business page.
With a drag-and-drop header and footer builder, organizing your content feels smooth. Plus, advanced styling options let you get creative with your design elements.
Top Features
- Amazing Page Builders Compatibility: It’s tailored to seamlessly integrate with top WordPress page builders, including Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and more.
- Personalize Header, Footer, and Sidebars: You can choose from various header elements and design headers, footers, and sidebars that match the latest web design trends.
- Enhance Backgrounds and Play with Colors: Rishi makes it really simple to control and customize your color scheme with multiple palettes, ensuring your website looks fresh and vibrant.
- Elementor Booster Module: You can even use the advanced freemium widgets, content protection, and animations with this booster, helping you design engaging pages faster.
- Content Access Control: With Rishi’s content restriction module, you have full control over who can access specific pages, web stories, and posts.
How to Choose the Right Free WordPress Theme for Your Website?
Do you know that choosing the right free WordPress theme is essential to create an effective, engaging, and user-friendly website?? Now, with thousands of free themes available out there, it can be difficult to make the right choice. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you select the perfect one:
- Firstly, Identify Your Website’s Purpose– Different themes are designed with specific purposes in mind like for blog, portfolio, e-commerce. So, choose a theme that fits with your niche.
- Ensure the theme is very simple and good UX– Too much of complex themes can slow down your website and confuse visitors. Ensure the theme has easy navigation, a clean design without unnecessary features and it should be mobile responsiveness (very important for good SEO)
- Choose themes that offer Customization Options– At times, Free themes often have limited customization options, but some allow you to change the colors, fonts, and layouts, add a logo and branding elements, and let you use widgets to extend functionality.
- Ensure multiple device & screen Responsiveness– A responsive wordpress theme ensures that your website looks great on mobile devices. Test the theme on the demo plans by resizing your browser window or using mobile preview tools.
- See if the themes have Compatibility with multiple Plugins– Check if the theme works well with essential plugins including SEO plugins, contact form plugins (WPForms), E-commerce plugins like WooCommerce.
- Look for SEO-Friendliness– A wordpress theme should follow SEO best practices like Fast loading speeds, Clean code, Proper use of HTML tags, Use tools like Google PageSpeed Analysis to know the theme’s demo performance.
- Test the Demo Before Installing– Most free themes provide demos that you can test. Look for Smooth navigation feature, matches your brand’s needs, and how easy it is to locate important information or pages.
Free vs. Premium WordPress Themes
If you are creating a wordpress website, one of the things that comes to mind is whether to use a free or premium theme. So, each of them comes with its own set of merits and demerits. Here’s a comparison that can help you decide which one fits your needs:
Free WordPress Themes | Premium WordPress Themes |
No financial investment is required | Prices typically range from $30 to $100 |
Often lightweight and fast | premium themes include unnecessary features |
Many websites use the same free themes | Many premium themes come with premium plugins |
Developers may stop maintaining theme, due to security risks | Developers actively maintain and update premium themes |
Basic customization options and fewer layouts. | Premium themes have premium plugins at no extra cost. |
Less design variety | More design variety |
WordPress Themes vs. Custom Web Design
Let’s say you are Creating a website, then what are you gonna choose?? WordPress themes or Custom Web Design?? So, the best option depends on your needs, budget, and long-term goals. Below is a detailed comparison.
WordPress Themes | Custom Web Design |
Themes are often affordable | Custom web design can be expensive, from $5K to $50K+ |
Themes can be installed and customized quickly | Creating from beginning requires more time for design, development, and testing |
Popular themes, like GeneratePress or Astra, have strong documentation and community support | Ongoing updates, bug fixes, and changes does not get dedicated support |
Page builders (like Elementor in the themes) make it easier to adjust layouts without coding | You need skilled designers and developers to make the layouts. |
FAQs
Are free WordPress themes safe to use?
Yes, Free WordPress themes are really very safe when used. However, you can avoid downloading the wordpress themes from unverified sources, as they may contain sort of malicious files and other related security issues. Always read the reviews, check the latest update, and ensure 100% compatibility with the latest WordPress version.
Can I customize a free WordPress theme?
Absolutely Yes!! Free WordPress themes offer quick customization options via the built-in WordPress Customizer. You can seamlessly modify layouts, color palettes, global fonts, and more. Some themes also support PageBuilders like Elementor for greater customization.
Are free WordPress themes SEO-friendly?
Yes!! For Sure!! Many free WordPress themes are built with SEO in mind, giving fast load times and optimized codes. However, SEO performance also depends on other factors, such as premium plugins, content quality, and website hosting. So, look for wordpress themes that mention SEO optimization in their features.
Can I use free WordPress themes for e-commerce websites?
Yes, some free themes, like those compatible with WooCommerce, are specifically designed for e-commerce stores only. However, free themes may have fewer other features compared to premium ones, so ensure that you choose a wordpress theme that aligns with your ecommerce store’s requirements.
What are the best free WordPress themes for beginners?
Some beginner-friendly or you can even say newbie-friendly free themes include Astra, that happens to be lightweight and fast with easy customization, then we have Neve, that is perfect for blogs and small business websites, even we suggest OceanWP, that is Beginner-friendly with great WooCommerce support and lastly, we recommend GeneratePress, Minimal and optimized for page builders like Elementor.
Can free WordPress themes be used for business websites?
Yes, many free themes are suitable for business or large scale enterprise websites. Just look for wordpress themes that offer portfolio sections, call-to-action buttons, business pitching hero section and engaging contact forms. For all that, we highly recommend Astra, Zakra, and Sydney.
Can I add plugins to free WordPress themes?
Absolutely! You can install and activate plugins with any free wordPress theme to extend functionality, such as SEO tools, contact forms, or performance optimization. Just make sure that the theme and plugins are highly compatible.
Can I use a free WordPress theme for multilingual websites?
Yes, many free wordpress themes are compatible with popular multilingual plugins. Be sure to check the theme’s documentation for compatibility or recommendations for multilingual setups.
Conclusion
Free WordPress theme is really a game changer!! It gives a new turn to newbies who want to startup an online business but have no coding skills. So here, to help them out we have listed the top 11# best free wordpress themes that can seriously change the way of doing business or engaging with visitors.
Now, Choosing the best free WordPress theme can heavily change your website’s look, and performance. Free themes that we’ve mentioned in this article like Astra, Neve, OceanWP, GeneratePress, and Zakra offer a variety of customization options, fast loading speeds, and mobile responsiveness, making them suitable for news blogs, small business websites, and even e-commercial stores.
While free themes may lack some advanced features available in premium versions, they are often enough to create a professional and an engaging website with Zero investment.
Ultimately, the best wordpress theme depends upon your website’s requirements, so take your time to explore the demo versions, test customization options, and even ensure themes’ compatibility with various plugins that you intend to use. With the right free WordPress theme, you can build a sleek and functional website to achieve your organizational goals.