We tested them: best free WordPress themes – top 10 for blogs and businesses [2024]

Choosing a theme is necessary to get started with your new WordPress website. A WordPress theme determines your website’s style and can help you add new features. 

We’ve tested and evaluated themes based on their functionality, design, and speed to help you find the best free WordPress themes. Join us as we present our top 10 list of free WordPress themes. 

Top 10 free WordPress themes 

At one.com, we have helped individuals and small businesses launch hundreds of thousands of WordPress websites with our optimised WordPress hosting. We also contribute our employees’ time to support the open WordPress project. In short, we really like WordPress, so listing some of our favourite themes for the platform will be fun! 

Precisely what theme best fits you may vary depending on your needs. Read our ranking as a collection of good themes rather than an absolute truth about the best theme. All themes on this list are good, so choose the one you think suits you best and feel free to test several before deciding.  

If you want to know more about how we tested, you can scroll to the end of the article, where we also give you tips on safely updating your theme. 

10. Sydney

Active users: 100 000+
Performance score: 94
Loading time in test: 2.6 seconds
Page builders: WordPress-redigeraren, Elementor
Paid version available: Yes
Download Sydney

Sydney is an excellent theme for introducing yourself or your business in a stylish and professional way. It makes it easy to get started, and the free version includes the most essential features. It works well with the WordPress editor as a page builder but also supports Elementor for more features. 

9. Hestia

Active users: 100 000+
Performance score: 67
Loading time in test: 2.9 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi
Paid version available: Yes
Download Hestia

Hestia is an excellent free WordPress theme for beginners. It makes it easy to get started and to create a stylish website. It is flexible enough to work well for everything from an online store to a portfolio site. The flexibility partly comes from Hestia supporting all major page builders. The only downside of Hestia is that it is a bit slower than other themes in our test. 

8. Blocksy

Active users: 100 000+
Performance score: 94
Loading time in test: 2.4 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, Brizy
Paid version available: Yes
Download Blocksy

Blocksy is a fast and popular WordPress theme that is easy to customise for many use cases. Like many other themes, there is a paid version with many additional features, but the free version has good functionality and is more than sufficient for simple websites. 

7. Kadence

Active users: 300 000+
Performance score: 95
Loading time in test: 1.7 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder
Paid version available: Yes
Download Kadence

Kadence is one of the most popular themes on the market, and there is a good reason for that. Kadence makes it easy to create a beautiful website with the WordPress editor and performs well. It has integrations with several valuable plugins, making it easy to create a stylish course website, for example. 

6. Zakra

Active users: 50 000+
Performance score: 95
Loading time in test: 1.2 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder
Paid version available: Yes
Download Zakra

Zakra is the second fastest theme we have tested. The free version is relatively simple and does not have as many features as other WordPress themes. On the other hand, the design is easier to customise, and you can change more details of the design than with many other themes. 

5. Astra

Active users: 1 000 000+
Performance score: 74
Loading time in test: 2.6 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, Visual Composer, Divi
Paid version available: Yes
Download Astra

Astra is one of the most advanced WordPress themes on the market. It can be used to create large online stores, news sites, and many other ambitious web projects. For that reason, Astra is not the best choice for a small website with one or just a few pages, but if you are looking for maximum functionality, Astra is one of the best options. Astra can be especially good if you know you want to start with a free theme but are open to paying for it in the future. 

4. Neve

Active users: 300 000+
Performance score: 94
Loading time in test: 2.6 seconds
Page builders: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi
Paid version available: Yes
Download Neve

The free version of Neve makes it easy to create large websites with good functionality. It supports WooCommerce well, for example. Neve is a fast WordPress theme that offers broad functionality in the free version and comprehensive support for page builders. 

3. GeneratePress

Active users: 600 000+
Performance score: 95
Loading time in test: 1.5 seconds
Page builder: WordPress Editor
Paid version available: Yes
Download GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a fast and simple theme that is perfect for getting started quickly with a basic website. GeneratePress does not have as many advanced features as some competitors, but that can actually be an advantage for those who want a reliable website that performs well and is easy to create and maintain. 

2. OceanWP

Active users: 600 000+
Performance score: 93
Loading time in test: 2.2 seconds
Page builder: WordPress Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi
Paid version available: Yes
Download OceanWP

OceanWP is a favourite of ours because its free version includes more features than many other themes. For example, it offers more options to edit the website’s header, good widgets for social media, support for custom fonts, and integration with course plugins and WooCommerce. OceanWP is clearly one of the most functional themes on the market in its free version. 

1. Twenty Twenty-Four

Active users: 1 000 000+
Performance score: 95
Loading time in test: 0.9 seconds
Page builder: WordPress Editor
Paid version available: No
Download Twenty Twenty-Four

Twenty Twenty-Four is the best free WordPress theme for most people. It is completely free, unlike all other themes on this list. It is also extremely fast, the fastest of all in our test, and it is easy to change its appearance. It also includes many beautiful patterns that make it easy to quickly create new pages with fresh designs. Twenty Twenty-Four can be used for advanced websites, but since it lacks many advanced features, these features need to come from plugins.  

Twenty Twenty-Four is not necessarily the best choice for the most ambitious WordPress projects. The fact that it is entirely free, combined with market-leading performance, still makes Twenty Twenty-Four the best free theme on the market. 

Explanation of the test 

Now that you know which free theme we think is the best for WordPress, you are probably wondering how we tested the themes. We’ll walk you through our process, then tell you more about page builders and updating themes. 

How we tested 

To find the world’s best free WordPress theme, we installed about twenty of the most popular free WordPress themes available on the market. We evaluated the functionality of the free version, tested them by creating simple pages customised side panels, and made simple design adjustments to understand what features are offered and how to use them. 

We also conducted performance tests with each theme. We created a simple portfolio page with the WordPress editor that was identical across all themes. We then tested the website with Google PageSpeed to assess performance.  

The performance score has 100 as its maximum, and a higher score is better. The loading time in the test is PageSpeed’s so-called Speed Index and is one of several variables that determine the performance score. 

Remember that the speed of your website can vary depending on what content you have, what hosting solution you use, what plugins you have installed, and what other optimisations you make. For all themes, a performance plugin such as WP Rocket is helpful. 

After gathering all test data, we ranked the themes based on their performance, functionality, and user-friendliness, with individuals and small businesses as the main target group. 

Page builders

A page builder is a piece of software that helps you create the structure and content of a website without writing code. WordPress includes a page builder called the WordPress Editor, also known as Gutenberg. It works with all themes and is generally the best way to create websites that are reliable, easy to maintain, and inexpensive. 

There are page builders that offer more features than the WordPress Editor. Support can vary between themes, and it is important to remember that a theme generally needs explicit support for a page builder to work correctly. 

There is no direct advantage to using a theme that supports multiple page builders. The important thing is that the theme you want to install supports the page builder you want to use. 

Should you choose a paid theme anyway? 

A good free WordPress theme can work well for a simple website. A free theme does not have to be insecure or perform poorly. The risk with a free theme is rather that it does not offer the flexibility or functionality that you may need for your website.  

It is generally risk-free to test different free themes, and if you find a free theme that has the features you need, there is no reason to pay for it. Just keep in mind that the theme should come from a reliable developer who updates the theme continuously. 

Of course, there can be big differences in functionality between a free and paid theme. Here are some examples of features that are often missing in a free WordPress theme: 

• Design templates 
• Alternative layouts 
• Advanced design customisations 
• Social media features 
• Advanced features for an online store 
• Ability to remove the theme’s watermark 
• Customer support 

Good paid themes for WordPress 

Many free WordPress themes we have tested in this article are offered as paid versions. All the themes we have tested are good, and the paid versions are even better but may vary in price.  

You generally need to pay an annual fee or a higher one-time fee to access all features and updates. There are also themes that are paid but that are not offered as free versions. An example of a marketplace for such themes is ThemeForest. 

Update your WordPress theme for security 

It is important that you update WordPress as well as the plugins and themes you use. Updates can give your website new features, improve stability, and fix security vulnerabilities. You expose yourself to risk if you do not update your website. All themes listed in this article are continuously updated to be safe to use. However, it can be tricky to actually install these updates. 

To make updates easier, we recommend automatic updates in WordPress. It minimises your maintenance but can cause problems if you are not careful. Updates can go wrong or change the appearance of your website. If a component of your website fails to update when you do not see it, it can mean that your site stops working.  

A good solution for this issue is Managed WordPress from one.com. With Managed WordPress, we handle all updates for you and perform visual checks before and after an update to ensure everything goes well. 

Install your theme 

There are several ways to install themes in WordPress. This is the easiest method: 

1. Log in to WordPress for your website. 
2. Select Appearance in the left sidebar. 
3. Select Add new theme. 
4. Search for a theme. 
5. Click Install. 
6. Click Activate. 

If you are unsure how to use other features in WordPress, you can read our beginner’s guide to WordPress.