A good WordPress theme isn’t just about the front outlook of your site. It is a yes or no game for anyone who lands on your page for the first time.
That’s how important a WordPress theme is.
It indeed compels a first-timer to engage with your site. And there are so many other benefits a good WordPress theme can get you.
If you have installed WordPress correctly, you need a versatile theme to enhance your site’s image.
By the way, we have a guide here on how to start a WordPress blog the right way, in case you need to do in-depth on this topic.
So which free WordPress theme is best for my blog?
As more and more sites embrace self-hosted WordPress platform, the demand for the best WordPress themes is rising exponentially.
We started to come across free versions of premium themes that are also some of the fastest WordPress themes in town.
Not every free WordPress theme can suit your site, and not all are consistent and maintain quality standards.
There are thousands of themes in the WordPress repository; still, picking up the best WordPress theme that is right for your blog/business site is like finding a needle in a haystack.
A best WordPress theme has to feature the following qualities.
- It should be well coded and lightweight
- It needs to be responsive and meet the latest SEO standards
- It should provide some basic customization and support third party plugins without a clash
- Developer should push updates regularly and provide essential support to the free version
But don’t worry, we have got your back covered.
Here is the collection of free themes that are clean, fast, responsive, and SEO optimized.
OceanWP
In our list of top free WordPress themes, we have OceanWP sprinting ahead of all other great free themes.
This lightweight multipurpose theme is WooCommerce ready and comes with tons of typography, design, and layout customization for desktop and mobile without a developer’s help – something that we don’t usually find in free WordPress themes.
OceanWP is also loaded with very useful SEO features, and it can work with the most popular page builders, including Elementor, Beaver, Brizy, Divi, and several others.
A performance boost feature inside the free version also helps capture an excellent score on the Google page speed tool and GTMetrix without adding an extra cache plugin.
Its paid version unleashes many features that make it one of the best WordPress premium themes.
Astra
Second, from the top comes the Astra free version in our list of best free WordPress themes, which is already among the most popular WordPress themes with over 1 million downloads.
Astra is also a speed monster with just a few files and only 50KB in size; this theme can give you green colors on Google page speed and GTMetrix.
This fully responsive minimal design is WooCommerce ready and loaded with fantastic customization tools for desktops and mobile devices.
The free version also offers some exciting skins for different niches, and it seamlessly works with all popular page builders.
Brainstorm, the developer of the theme, offers some great support to its free users.
GeneratePress
GeneratePress is another robust minimalist design that is catching up really fast behind Astra in terms of downloads.
GeneratePress also believes in top-notch speed when it comes to website loading. Its less than 10 KBs gzip file hugely contributes to blazing-fast speed.
Google page speed and GTMetrix simply love its performance.
The free version of GeneratePress isn’t as rich in features as OceanWP and Astra; still, it offers some useful typography and layout options to play with.
GeneratePress is multipurpose, page builder friendly, WooCommerce ready, and offers very good user support on the WordPress forum.
Zakra
Zakra is relatively a newer multipurpose theme, but it comes with quality coding that promises blazingly fast performance, making it worthy of finding a place in our list of best free themes for WordPress.
This wonderful theme can become a choice for any site type, including an e-commerce store, a coffee shop, a blog, or a school site.
Zakra is SEO friendly, integrates with page builders, and is compatible with all famous WordPress plugins.
The pro version offers a plethora of features that are somewhat limited on the free version.
Neve
We can comfortably put Neve in the list of fastest WordPress themes as we tested it raw without the aid of a cache plugin.
Right away after installation, it can give a full-width grid layout for the home page, which is very well balanced from the blogger’s perspective; that’s what makes us fall in love with this theme.
Interestingly you can switch between different layouts in this free WordPress theme. And, it also offers tons of other customization features to style the entire website the way you want.
Another unique feature of Neve is the pre-designed templates you can download from its cloud. Neve team has put dozens of free and premium skins based on Gutenberg, Elementor, Brizy, and Beaver which also shows its seamless performance with all the famous page builders.
Neve is a responsive theme and a single solution for business types.
To make your life easier, we are continuously hunting for the best free themes for WordPress. There are hundreds of them out there, and soon as we test one, we make it a part of our collection.
So don’t forget to come back to find another top performer.
What do you think about our collection, do let us know in the comment area?
And suggest to us a theme you want us to test and include in our list.