WordPress offers an incredible number of themes. With such fierce competition, the themes that stand out are often among the best-performing ones. As a result, it can be difficult to make a choice. Here is a list of the 15 best WordPress themes—both free and paid—that you can find this year.
The Best Free WordPress Themes in 2023
If you're a beginner, it's best to start with a free WordPress theme. Later on, you might want to consider premium tools if you're looking for more advanced features. In the meantime, you can explore some great free themes for your website that will serve you well. Here are ten of the best ones available.
Astra
This theme is one of the best you’ll find. Not only does it offer a wide variety of templates, but it’s also free. Among the many templates already available, you’re sure to find one that meets your needs, whatever they may be—whether it’s an online store, a portfolio site, or a blog. Speaking of which, if you want to use WordPress to build your blog, your best bet is to choose Astra. That way, you’ll be well on your way to creating a high-quality blog. Astra delivers outstanding performance, giving it an edge over most of its competitors.
In fact, you can customize this theme by changing the menu, colors, and more. For a free WordPress theme, Astra is lightweight, high-performing, and fast. Plus, this theme lets you use several website-building tools. These include Elementor, WooCommerce, and others. However, it’s worth noting that Astra has a premium version. As a result, it’s no surprise that the free version is somewhat limited in terms of performance. With the premium version of Astra, you can make even more customizations. You can also manage navigation menus more effectively, for example.
Neve
Among the highest-rated free themes based on the number of active installations available on WordPress is Neve. It’s suitable for beginners, as well as experienced bloggers, web agencies, and businesses. In fact, it’s user-friendly, flexible, and easy to use.
Neve is also a very fast and lightweight theme. It’s very easy to use and is truly the perfect tool for a beginner. With Neve, creating a professional WordPress site will take just a few minutes. Not only is it free, but it’s also fully optimized for AMP and offers excellent mobile compatibility. Neve also helps improve a site’s SEO, as each step is carried out in a well-organized manner.
OceanWP
It’s impossible to list the best WordPress themes without mentioning OceanWP. It’s worth noting that there was a time when it was vying for the top spot with Astra. What caused OceanWP to lose its top spot is likely because this theme seems less user-friendly than its biggest competitor. Despite this, it remains one of the most sought-after themes, with no fewer than 3 million downloads. It features excellent templates that will help you achieve the look you’re seeking for your site as closely as possible.
Even though the free version is very good, the paid version of OceanWP is excellent. The paid version gives you access to more advanced features, including premium plugins. You’ll also have access to better templates. You’ll be able to manage your menus, widgets, and more more effectively. However, you don’t necessarily need to opt for the paid version right away. The free version of the OceanWP theme is great for a beginner who wants to create a simple WordPress site.
Hestia
Although it’s a free WordPress theme, Hestia offers highly professional templates. It’s perfect for anyone just starting out in website design. Hestia provides a pleasant and easy-to-manage navigation experience, thanks to its simple setup. This setup allows you to do without a page builder, which won’t prevent you from creating beautiful designs. To edit and customize your WordPress site’s homepage however you like, simply use the Hestia theme’s settings panel.
Keep in mind that even if you don’t really need a page builder, you can always use a plugin like Elementor, for example. However, this is just an option—not a requirement. So it’s up to you!
Airi
Airi is another great theme—and it’s free, too. With its performance, this theme is perfectly suited for a WordPress site. For starters, you can be sure it won’t slow down your website. In fact, Airi isn’t a resource-intensive theme. It’s quite lightweight and will allow you to offer visitors an engaging user experience. What’s more, Airi will help your WordPress site achieve good SEO rankings. All of this is very important, because it’s not beneficial for a website if users have to wait more than 3 seconds for it to load.
In this kind of situation, a large number of users will tend to leave before the site has fully loaded. With this WordPress theme, you’ll have a site that loads quickly. Although it’s free, Airi is also suitable for professionals. This means a business can use it for professional purposes. It can also be used for freelance projects, etc. To make it even easier to use, this WordPress theme provides extensive documentation and support. Airi is also compatible with WordPress plugins such as Elementor, WooCommerce, and more.
Sydney
This theme is better suited for professional use or a personal blog, for example. Even in its paid version, Sydney lets you use pre-designed, high-quality templates. You also have the option to create your own templates if you’d like. One interesting thing to note is that this WordPress theme is recommended by Elementor. With over 600 Google Fonts, Sydney is fully mobile-responsive. All of this makes translation easier. As for theme updates, they’re released regularly, and each update includes fixes for minor bugs.
Similarly, new features are constantly being added to enhance this free WordPress theme. This is evident with every new update. For once, Sydney—even though it’s free—also offers a paid version. With this version, just like with others, you’ll have access to many more interesting features. So, you’ll need to pay to take advantage of additional templates. The same goes for more advanced customization of your pages or posts on your site. The paid version of Sydney also offers additional options for configuring the theme.
GeneratePress
This WordPress theme is just as excellent as all the others we’ve mentioned so far. However, unlike the others, GeneratePress places more emphasis on its paid version than on its free version. As a result, to get the most out of its performance, you’ll need to switch to the paid version. Even so, the free version of GeneratePress still offers a few features, although they are fairly limited. It’s true that performance remains good and the site is lightweight. As for search engine optimization, you can optimize your WordPress site.
In addition, generatePress is highly compatible with almost all WordPress plugins. However, the paid version offers more value, with all the premium modules at your disposal. You’ll also benefit from personalized customer support, a wide selection of pre-designed templates, and more.
Storefront
In fact, this WordPress theme is the one officially used by WooCommerce. It’s completely free and perfectly suited for online stores. For merchants looking to build an e-commerce site, this is the WordPress theme they need. Storefront is not only highly intuitive but also flexible and responsive. Its variety of templates makes this WordPress theme the best choice for building an e-commerce site.
With it, you'll be able to customize your online store. You can enjoy all of this with the free version, but you also have the option to get even more with the paid version of Storefront. While it’s already fast as a theme, discover Storefront in a whole new light with its paid version. You’ll then have access to even more exciting additional features. However, it’s worth noting that even in its free version, this WordPress theme is already excellent.
Shapely
If you’re looking for a WordPress theme that lets you customize multiple aspects of your site at once, then Shapely is the one for you. Not only is this WordPress theme free, but it’s also responsive and fully compatible with WooCommerce. One of its standout features is that it lets you automatically manage your images.
Shapely is a WordPress theme that lets you have a lot of fun customizing your site. To do this, simply go to its settings. From there, you can modify the footer, change your site’s color however you like, customize the header, and more. If any of this seems a bit complicated, just visit the Shapely theme website. Once there, you’ll find a demo. This will give you everything you need to change and customize your site however you like.
ColorMag
While some WordPress themes are more general-purpose, others are more specialized. This is the case with ColorMag. In fact, it’s best suited for creating a news website or blog on WordPress. This theme stands out from the rest thanks to its design, but that’s exactly what makes it a perfect fit for news content. It has a paid version, but that doesn’t stop it from offering up to 15 different templates in its free version. Thanks to this, even with the free version of ColorMag, you can easily find a suitable look for your website.
Of course, to access more themes, you’ll need to sign up for a Premium subscription. This will give you access to much more advanced technical support. ColorMag offers excellent loading performance. In fact, your website’s loading time with this theme will be well under one second. Plus, it’s fully compatible with all major web browsers. Better yet, it also offers great compatibility with popular page builders such as Gutenberg, Brizy, Elementor, and others.
The Best Paid WordPress Themes in 2023
In reality, there are no completely free WordPress themes. As you may have noticed, most of the free themes we mentioned earlier also have paid versions. These are freemium WordPress themes, which means they offer a limited free version. Even those that appear to be completely free have paid add-ons. In such cases, you’ll generally have to pay a few dozen euros.
Alternatively, you can opt for a custom-designed WordPress theme. However, this could cost you a few thousand euros. Properly maintaining a theme requires financial resources on the part of its creator. This allows the creator to regularly address bugs and develop new features, which in turn helps improve the theme. This is achieved through the release of regular updates.
If you want to take full advantage of a WordPress theme and all its features, here are a few premium themes you might want to try.
Divi
It’s undoubtedly one of the most popular themes in the world. It’s much more than just a theme, and this is largely due to its page builder, which is unlike any other. When you purchase a Divi license, you’ll have access to over 800 templates. This vast selection will allow you to create web pages with elegant, modern designs that reflect your style. This WordPress theme is one of the highest-rated and was developed by ElegantThemes.
Avada
Avada was developed by ThemeFusion. This WordPress theme offers far fewer templates than Divi. However, it still provides up to 80 templates, which is quite a few. This gives you plenty of options for designing your website’s pages. Easy to use, Avada remains the best-selling WordPress theme to date. It’s worth noting that it has racked up over 600,000 sales.
Hello Theme
The Hello theme is the official Elementor theme, best suited for use with the Elementor website builder. It is a popular WordPress theme, used on over a million websites. It is lightweight, fast, and allows you to build professional websites seamlessly using Elementor’s drag-and-drop visual editor. The Hello theme lets you create and customize every part of your website—including the header and footer—to meet your design and business needs.
With the Hello theme, you have comprehensive customization options and the freedom to build any type of website, taking full advantage of all of Elementor’s features to create stunning websites that display perfectly on any device.
Hello is designed for optimal page speed, performance, and SEO, improving your search engine rankings by providing an excellent user experience and reducing bounce rates. It is open source, RTL-compatible, and written in clean code, so you can design and develop Hello however you like.
The7
Looking for a WordPress theme that you can customize however you like? You’ve come to the right place. In addition to being fully compatible with WooCommerce, Elementor, and more, The7 offers up to 60 templates. That’s everything you need to create your website in just a few clicks. So take advantage of the excellent foundation this WordPress theme provides. It’s also one of the best-selling and most popular themes, with over 200,000 sales.
Enfold
This WordPress theme has also generated more than 200,000 sales. It also offers a wide selection of templates. One of its advantages is that it can be used to design all kinds of websites, whether it’s a blog, a corporate site, an e-commerce site, a portfolio, and so on. Enfold is clearly one of the most popular themes right now.
Extra Magazine Theme
The name of this WordPress theme already indicates that it is primarily used for designing magazines and blogs. In its field, the Extra Magazine Theme is undoubtedly one of the best. As proof, it has amassed more than 800,000 downloads to date. Extra Magazine allows users to design a simple, user-friendly website. It can be perfectly tailored to the specific needs of magazines, while helping them showcase their content.
The 15 Best WordPress Themes: A Summary
With so many themes available, it’s not at all easy to make a choice. While some WordPress themes are free, others are typically only available for a fee. However, when making your choice, you should consider the complexity of the WordPress site you want to create. In fact, one of the best free WordPress themes might be the perfect fit for you. That way, you won’t have to spend a single penny on a paid theme.
However, depending on the specific features you want for your site, you may need a paid version of a WordPress theme. Whatever you choose, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for among the 15 best WordPress themes we’ve just listed. So it’s up to you!
