12 Fastest Free WordPress Themes in 2022 (Tested for Superfast Speed)

As the popularity of Wordpress is growing, themes have always been in increasing demand. While first starting out with Wordpress, not everyone wants to go for expensive buying options. All they need is a fast alternative that could help them in making their website beautiful and fast loading at the same time. That’s where free fastest wordpress themes kicks in.

Free Wordpress themes can be used by many new users without giving a second thought to the paid themes. Here in this post, we are going to talk about those 15 fastest free wordpress themes that have shown their best performance in 2022.

Let’s call them fast-loading themes. With easy settings, impressive layouts, and accommodating mega menus, each theme is created to speed up your Wordpress site.

For sure, they are not only designed to build the foundation of a wordpress site but also created to level up slow loading sites.

How Wordpress Fastest Free Themes Can Help You?

You might be wondering what makes Wordpress themes fastest? Well, Fast themes can help increase your site speed as they

Use cleaner CSS and less CSS files
make less HTTP requests
rely on less Javascript
smaller in size, thus faster to download
process faster on server by using less code

There is also another question that could have possibly crossed your mind i.e., why should I install fastest Wordpress themes, how can they exactly help me?

A fastest free wordpress theme can help you:

make your site faster, lighter and easier to load
enhance SEO & eventually, increase Google rankings
give high conversions
decrease bounce rate
build more website traffic

Now let’s jump right into the fastest free themes on Wordpress to make your site faster. Each and every theme is well tested with the help of Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, WebPageTest and other website speed testing tools. Here we have attached the data we got for LCP, Speed index and performance score of each theme.

The Fastest & Lightweight Free Wordpress Themes in 2022

GeneratePress.

Here is the test data we have found while testing GeneratePress performance:

Speed Index (PSI): 1.8 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.2 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.45 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

GeneratePress is one of the fastest free WordPress themes out there. It is designed with an emphasis of making it clean and lightweight in code.

Moreover, this theme doesn’t rely on jQuery JavaScript library and is built to perform with fast speed for wordpress users. The most impressive thing is that it only uses less than 30kb of your storage. And, in this small size, it goes beyond their limits and offers best quality features for free.

While testing GeneratePress, we were impressed with its versatility and variety of customization options. Thus, it fits perfectly to any niche & makes the best out of them.

You can also choose the premium version of this theme. With its affordable premium version, you will be able to access all the pre-built demo sites that you can easily import.

Astra

Here is another fastest free option for you. And, we have placed Astra on second in this list because of its great performance as fastest wordpress theme in 2022.

It is another theme that doesn't have dependency on jQuery. The size of Astra theme is only about 50kb and is super lightweight.

Take a look at what we have found while testing Astra performance:

Speed Index (PSI): 2s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.4 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.65 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

If customization is what you are looking for in a theme, you can’t leave Astra behind. Astra comes with many customizable features and allows you to import free demo websites built with either Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg or can be adjusted with real-time Customizer.

Sydney

Speed Index (PSI): 2.6 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 2.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.8 s
Performance Score (GT): 99%
Performance Score (PSI): 96%

Sydney is a multipurpose fastest theme for Wordpress with the free version. The new performance improvements have made this theme even lighter than before. Since it was never a slow theme, the theme has now become lightweight and also improved in code base.

It has removed all the dependencies on jQuery JavaScript library. Sydney sets well with Elementor and includes a variety of pre-built Elementor-based demo sites.

Neve

Speed Index (PSI): 2.0 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.2 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.7 s
Performance Score (GT): 99%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

Neve is another fastest WordPress theme specifically designed to make use of Gutenberg Wordpress block editor. It offers many built in features that makes it a fast-loading theme for Wordpress users.

Neve highly supports mega menu, and comes with lots of WordPress Customizer options, and importable templates.

Arke

Speed Index (PSI): 2.3 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.3 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.49 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

Arke is another fastest free WordPress theme designed with a minimalistic look. Having a minimalist theme, we can consider it a fast loading Wordpress theme.

It entails a lot of white space and text that doesn’t make it a slower theme. Arke comprises No sidebars, no widgets, and no settings. It can be a best option for writers as it provides a great canvas for your content.

EcoCoded

Speed Index (PSI): 3.2 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 2.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.8 s
Performance Score (GT): 99%
Performance Score (PSI): 93%

EcoCoded is a newer Wordpress theme that aims to create a website eco-friendly by reducing resources required to run. This fast-loading theme can optimize your site for speed i.e. making your site lightweight. You can go with EcoCoded if your need is to create a clean and minimal website.

Kadence

Speed Index (PSI): 2.1 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.4 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.47 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

Kadence is a newcomer in the list of fastest free wordpress themes. The theme gets a lot of attention because of its highly customizable feature that can be used for a variety of niches.

The best thing about Kadence is that you can find many options in the WordPress Customizer.

Zakra

Speed Index (PSI): 2.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.7 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.7 s
Performance Score (GT): 99%
Performance Score (PSI): 99%

Zakra is also one of the lightweight and fastest Wordpress themes from ThemeGrill that offers 50 different demos to import in the site. Using these demos, you can cover a variety of niche and field you belong to.

Each pre-built demo is constructed with native block editor, Elementor and Brizy. Above that, you will also get plenty of customizer control that allow you to customize colors and layouts according to your site.

Blocksy

Speed Index (PSI): 2.2 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.6 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.8 s
Performance Score (GT): 99%
Performance Score (PSI): 99%

Blocksy is a modern Wordpress theme that stands out as the fastest free theme with its header builder, modern layouts and customizability. The Webpack build pipeline provided by theme ensures clean code and the backend built in options through React which helps in speedy customization experience.

Page Builder Framework

Speed Index (PSI): 3.1 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 2.1 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.6 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 98%

While talking about free fastest Wordpress themes, we can’t forget Page Builder Framework. It is a lightweight, customizable base theme that becomes one of the best choices for users.

With its built-in features, it can be best used to handle your site header, footer, templates and theme related customization and leverage it to design quality content.

Hello

Speed Index (PSI): 1.9 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 1.3 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.5 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 100%

Hello is one of a kind as fastest free wordpress theme in 2022 because of it’s less-features like the other themes.
However, it can be used as the most lightweight theme possible with the use of Elementor.
So, if you are looking for a not fully feature-stacked Wordpress theme, you can go with Hello. That means, pairing it with page builder would be best for you.

Ocean WP

Speed Index (PSI): 4.0 s
Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 2.9 s
Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 0.6 s
Performance Score (GT): 100%
Performance Score (PSI): 88%

We can’t leave OceanWP from the list of fastest free Wordpress themes in 2022 as it is another streamlined option with the same basic features and qualities just like GeneratePress and Astra.

Now as a lightweight base theme, you can customize your site under your niche with Ocean WP. It is specifically designed for Woocommerce sites and keeping their needs in mind.

Like Astra, OceanWP also offers free pre-built demo sites to be imported and to support you when you don't want to create a website from scratch.

However, OceanWP is not as lightweight as some other themes, but overall, it is well-optimized, provides tons of features and customization options for all niches.

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