Top 10 Fastest WordPress Themes in 2024 [+ Test Data]

Google has been considering Page speed a ranking factor since 2010, and it’s a feature you wouldn’t want to ignore if you wish your website to match with its competitors. Moreover, your website’s loading speed plays a significant role in your visitors’ experience and how well your website ranks in search engines.

To have a fast-loading website, you need to choose a fast WordPress theme. This is where we come in, giving you a carefully-selected list with the best fast-loading WordPress themes you can find out there.

Top Features of Fast WordPress Themes

Several factors indicate a WordPress theme’s speed. Let’s go through some of them.

Responsive design

A responsive design is a must-have feature if you want your theme to offer an excellent mobile experience. But what do we mean by responsive design?

Nowadays, people will visit your website through both mobile and desktop devices. Responsive themes automatically load your website based on your visitors’ screen, making it unnecessary to have two separate versions, which would cause your website to load slower. Additionally, responsive design only requires one set of code and is recommended by Google.

Image size

Have you ever visited a website and waited an eternity for its slider picture to load? That’s because the website was packed with high-quality images, requiring a bulky code that slows down the page.

To avoid that, we suggest you keep your website picture sizes below 200KB so they don’t hold down your site’s loading speed.

Asynchronous CSS and JavaScript loading

CSS and JavaScript files may slow down your website; however, they’re necessary to make your page look attractive and interactive.

These types of files load in two ways: synchronously or asynchronously. While synchronous loading means that each file loads one at a time, asynchronous loading allows multiple files to load immediately, therefore speeding up a website’s performance. With this in mind, it’s best to choose themes designed to load asynchronously.

What is the Optimal Loading Speed for a Website?

Short answer: As fast as possible. Long answer: Well, it’s complicated. Several factors determine your site’s loading speed, such as its type, niche, and other key performance metrics. However, more than half of website visits are abandoned if the site takes more than three seconds to load, so try to keep your loading speed between 0 to 3 seconds.

How We Tested the Fastest WordPress Themes?

The list of the fastest themes we’re about to show you is based on real data, and let us tell you how we got them.

There are several tools that help you check a WordPress theme’s loading speed, and while they have different servers, they usually share the same results. We used GTmetrix since it’s based on the Lighthouse engine that Google uses, but you can also use other tools such as WebPageTest or Pingdom.

The whole process takes no more than 4 steps, and you can do it too. Let us show you how.

Step 1: Enter the URL of the demo you want to test.

Step 2: Click the “Test your site” button.

Step 3: Wait for the speed test to process.

Step 4: View and analyze the results.

GTmetrix also makes an audit of your top issues and gives you advice on how to improve them so your site runs more smoothly.

10 Fastest WordPress Themes in 2024

We searched high and low and came up with the fastest WordPress themes you can find. Ready to hear more about them? Let’s dive in!

Hello Elementor

Say Hello to Hello, one of the fastest WordPress themes. This clean, speedy, and SEO-optimized WordPress theme allows you to build lightning websites that will give your visitors a remarkable user experience.

Hello comes with minimal styling, but at the same time, it gives you full freedom to design your website the way you want. The secret why Hello is blazing fast stands behind its lean and non-intrusive code that doesn’t have any unnecessary styling.

Moreover, Hello is continuously updated, so it never meets performance and compatibility standards. Oh, one more thing: it works with Elementor, so you get the point.

Kalium

Architecture, Photography, Agency, Bookstore are some of the various niches you can build a fast-loading site with the Kalium theme. Forget bulky codes that weigh down your site; with Kalium, your website feels like a ballerina bouncing over the internet.  This is confirmed by GTmetrix, which gives Kalium a 97% performance and an A grade.

Packed with numerous layout designs, drag and drop elements, and rich theme options, Kalium helps you create a visually stunning website in just a few minutes. Now, imagine having 18 translators working on your website 24/7. Well, in a sense, they will be because Kalium is translated in no less than 18 languages.

We know that beauty lies on the inside, but this theme pays great attention to the outside as well. And all the stunning elements of your website will look great on any device because Kalium is mobile-friendly and retina-ready.

GeneratePress

Are you a freelancer or agency who wants to showcase your work through a fast and stylish website? If so, try GeneratePress, and thank us later.

This fast-loading WordPress theme has more than 3.8 million downloads, and there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be one of them. Its free and open source is destined to focus on speed, usability, and accessibility, so your website offers the users experience visitors expect from a great website.

Let us back our words with some numbers. With only a 7.5 kb page size, 2 HTTP requests, and no dependencies at all, this theme is as light as a feather.

Astra

Astra is one of the most known WordPress themes that is everything you’d want a great theme to be: fast, lightweight, and highly customizable.

If our words don’t convince you, maybe these numbers will. Astra has a 100% speed grade in Pingdom, a 95% score in Google DEV, and its load time in GTmetrix is only 400ms.

You want a fast-loading site, but why stop there? Astra’s speed is not the key feature of the theme. It comes with an extensive library of pre-made websites which you can easily customize to your needs. With Astra, you can customize your site’s colors, fonts, and layouts to match your brand. It comes with an SEO-optimized code and WooCommerce integration.

Cool, right?

Kadence

Building effective websites are not easy, but it’s not rocket science either, especially with themes like Kadence that make everything easier. Kadence comes with a fast loading time that immediately gets your website visitors.

Yes, time is money, and your visitors’ time is valuable. But that doesn’t mean you should pay less attention to your time. That’s why with Kadence’s fast and smooth setup, all there’s left for you to do is import a beautifully designed site and change the content.

Lastly, but just as importantly, you can use its themes and plugins on as many sites as you wish. Yes, even on your client ones.

Neve

Neve is a fast-loading WordPress theme that is flexible and easy to use even if you don’t have any coding experience.

This theme is compatible with some of the most popular page builders, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Brizy, which means that nothing will stop you from customizing your site until the smallest detail. Additionally, you can easily change your site’s colors, fonts, and layouts to match your brand.

Today, over 6.9 million blogs are published daily, and you don’t want to stay behind. That’s why this theme offers customizable blog layouts that will surely boost your blogging experience.

Blocksy

Are you looking to build a web project but don’t have any coding skills? Don’t worry; you can do that through Blocksy, and your website will rock!

This theme feels fast, and numbers confirm it has a top rank in most speed testing tools. This is because it has thoughtfully written clean code that optimizes its speed. Additionally, Blocksy is eCommerce ready so that you can build an awesome online store to sell like a pro.

Dark mode lovers, we have great news. This theme comes with its customized dark mode so that you or your visitors can make the website dark with just a single click.

OceanWP

OceanWP is a beginner-friendly WordPress theme with several unique features to help you build websites that will succeed. Based on our testing data and over 5000 reviews, OceanWP is faster than flash.

Its extensive library of more than 220 ready-made templates allows you to pick your favorite niche and change its content. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can still build everything from scratch just the way you want.

Selling your products online is a great way to increase your conversion rate, and thanks to its WooCommerce compatibility, OceanWP allows you to build a top-notch online store.

Zakra

Zakra is a powerful and multipurpose WordPress theme that gives you countless possibilities to create a fast and SEO-friendly website in no time.

This theme includes a lightweight framework that is the key behind its amazing speed. Additionally, thanks to its customizer and individual page settings, you can easily customize any changes on the website.

Zakra is proven to be fast, and numbers back that up. This theme has a 98% Performance Grade score in Pingdom, 100% Speed Score in Google DEV, and 97% Page Speed Score in GTMetrix.

Reign

Reign theme by Wbcom Designs is the best compatible theme that can create your social marketplace vision. The theme is fully compatible with  BuddyPress and Dokan plugins. The theme can transform your website since it appears to be a lot more focused and like a well-organized marketplace. It is specifically designed to support BuddyPress and additional plugins like WC Vendors, WCFM, Dokan, and EDD.

Wrapping Up

Selecting a fast-loading WordPress theme will help you build a website that matches your visitors’ expectations and helps you rank better in search results. All of the themes mentioned above can do just that; all there’s left to do is select your favorite and start building your fantastic website.