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You want a great WordPress theme but you don’t want to pay, huh? With other platforms, that would be nigh-on impossible. But thanks to the generosity of WordPress developers, you can actually find a ton of great free WordPress themes.
To go along with our post on the best free WordPress plugins, we’ve collected 40+ of the best free WordPress themes for your viewing pleasure.
You might be wondering, what makes a theme one of the “best free WordPress themes”? That’s the tough part about writing a post like this – design is subjective, so it’s hard to come up with an objective way to define something as the “best”.
I’m going to try to mitigate that by bringing in social proof from WordPress.org’s active install numbers and ratings. That way – you’ll know that it’s not just me who thinks a theme is the “best” – it’s thousands of other people, as well!
40+ Best Free WordPress Themes For 2018:
1. Astra
Active Installs: 80,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Astra is a massively popular multipurpose theme with a focus on performance. At less than 50KB file size, it’s incredibly lightweight. But it still packs tons of features and lets you customize your site with the native WordPress Customizer. The coolest thing is the free companion plugin that lets you easily import sites built with Elementor or Beaver Builder.
2. Hestia
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Hestia is a free material design WordPress theme that can be used for a wide variety of niches. It’s based on the WordPress Customizer, which means easy customizations. And you can also find a bunch of different free Hestia child themes that make it easy to switch up Hestia’s looks.
3. OceanWP
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
OceanWP is another lightweight, flexible multipurpose theme that you can make look like…pretty much anything. Most people choose to pair OceanWP with a page builder because it integrates so well with page builders. And like Astra, you can also import free pre-built demo sites to quickly get started.
4. GeneratePress
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading free WordPress themes that I’ve ever used. I switched to it on my portfolio site and it instantly cut my page load times by ~40%.
But it’s not just about speed – it’s also incredibly flexible, and its multipurpose approach means that you can use it for pretty much any type of WordPress site. That is, the demo above is by no means the limit of what you can do with GeneratePress.
5. Sydney
Active Installs: 200,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Sydney is a massively popular free WordPress business theme that makes a great option for both businesses and freelancers alike. Thanks to its built-in content blocks, you can easily customize your homepage design even if you don’t know any code.
6. Storefront
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
An official theme from Automattic, Storefront is one of the best free WooCommerce themes that you’ll find. Because it comes from the same team that actually develops the WooCommerce plugin, you can be sure it follows best practices. And it’s also easy to customize and extend as needed.
7. Writee
Active Installs: 30,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Writee is a great free blogging theme. I think it especially fits anyone in the food or travel niches, though you can use it for other topics as well. It also includes built-in related posts and social share button functionality, which eliminates the need for some external plugins.
8. Mesmerize
Active Installs: 30,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Mesmerize is a gorgeous multipurpose theme that helps you build your website using live editing in the WordPress Customizer. The design quality of this one is really impressive – I can see why it’s so highly rated.
9. Zerif Lite
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
Zerif Lite is a popular free one-page WordPress theme that makes a great option for freelancers, agencies, and other businesses. Built on Bootstrap, it offers easy customization via the WordPress Customizer and a neat parallax effect.
10. Kale
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Kale is a free WordPress theme that’s great for food, travel, fashion, or lifestyle blogs. It features a minimalist design with a heavy focus on imagery, as well as lots of little customization options.
11. One Page Express
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
As you can probably guess from the name, One Page Express is a free one-page WordPress theme that helps you build your page using simple drag-and-drop. You can choose from lots of content sections to create your homepage, including video backgrounds, slideshows, and plenty more.
11. Ashe
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Ashe is a great free theme for lifestyle or fashion bloggers, as well as other related niches. It has a clean look with lots of spots to highlight your images and featured content. It also makes it easy to bring in your Instagram content.
12. ColorMag
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
ColorMag is a popular free magazine WordPress theme from ThemeGrill. It features a neat multi-size grid layout and also includes pre-built sections to house AdSense or banner ads. As a result, it’s a great option for any type of publishing site.
13. ShopIsle
Active Installs: 40,000+ | Rating: 4.5 stars
ShopIsle is another popular free WooCommerce theme. It has a clean look, and the native WooCommerce product filter widgets look wonderful. If you need to build a WooCommerce store on a budget, this is a good starter.
14. Total
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 5 stars
Total is a free multipurpose theme that includes a detailed homepage, complete with parallax scrolling effect. It’s also WooCommerce-ready and works great with page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder.
15. NewsMag
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
NewsMag is another stellar free WordPress magazine theme that makes a great option for publishers. Like ColorMag, it includes built-in slots for banner or AdSense ads, and it also offers 4 different blog page styles for you to choose from.
16. Spacious
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Spacious is a free responsive WordPress theme from ThemeGrill, the same makers of the popular ColorMag theme. It’s well-suited for creating a business or portfolio site and includes a variety of layouts and templates to help you build your site.
17. Vantage
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Vantage is a free multipurpose theme from SiteOrigin, the developers behind the massively popular SiteOrigin Page Builder plugin. As you’d expect, it integrates well with the page builder, and it’s also WooCommerce-ready and integrated with Smart Slider 3.
18. Customizr
Active Installs: 100,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Customizr is a flexible lightweight theme from Nicolas Guillaume of Press Customizr. Customizr offers nice parallax scrolling and is easy to customize via the live WordPress Customizer (hence the name!).
19. Primer
Active Installs: 30,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Primer is a free multipurpose theme from GoDaddy (yes – that GoDaddy – they make themes, now). There was some controversy when this theme was released, but it’s quickly grown in popularity and makes for a great base theme. GoDaddy has also released some free child themes to offer a different look.
20. Hemingway
Active Installs: 30,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
True to the name, Hemingway is a free theme that’s especially popular with bloggers and writers. It offers a clean design that really puts the focus right on your words.
21. Checathlon
Active Installs: 500+ | Rating: 5-stars
Checathlon isn’t very popular at WordPress.org, but I’m overruling the crowd because I love all of Sami Keijonen’s themes and this one deserves more attention. It has clean code and makes for a great business website. It also integrates well with Easy Digital Downloads if you want to sell digital products.
22. Lightning
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Lightning is a free Bootstrap-based WordPress theme that’s great for any type of site. One neat thing is that it’s designed to work well with custom post types and taxonomies, which makes it a good option if you’re planning to use non-standard post types.
23. Olsen Light
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Olsen light is a free blogging theme that fits especially well with fashion and lifestyle bloggers. It includes built-in social sharing icons, as well as custom widgets and a dedicated Instagram integration.
24. Make
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 4-stars
Make is a free theme from The Theme Foundry that comes bundled with its own lightweight page builder. When I first created my writing portfolio, it was with Make, so this theme has a special place in my heart. Easy to customize and control, it’s still a great option for creating any type of WordPress site.
Demo (this site is built with Make) |Download
25. Hitchcock
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Hitchcock is a free portfolio theme for designers, photographers, and other visual creatives. The homepage features a great-looking image grid to showcase your work, and the bold full-screen background adds a nice effect. If users hover over an image in the grid, they’ll see the title and meta information.
26. Travelify
Active Installs: 20,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Travelify is a free travel blogger theme from the Colorlib family. The top features a bold post-slider, and all the individual blog posts also have large featured images to help showcase your travel photography.
27. Nikkon
Active Installs: 7,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Nikkon is a multipurpose creative theme that features a neat masonry grid on the homepage. If you want to switch things up, it also includes multiple page layouts, as well as different footer layouts.
28. AccessPress Parallax
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
As you’d expect, AccessPress Parallax’s defining feature is the built-in one-page parallax design. Beyond the parallax design, it also features a variety of sections for services, team members, portfolios, testimonials, and more.
29. Edge
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Edge is a free WordPress blogging theme from Theme Freesia. It features a clean design and uses the native WordPress Customizer for easy code-free changes. Like some of the other themes, you can also find free Edge child themes that help offer a different look. For example, the Alternative child theme.
30. Vertex
Active Installs: 7,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Vertex is a responsive creative theme that makes great use of white space in its minimal look. It also offers a unique header, which sits as a vertical menu in the full-width hero image.
31. Baskerville
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Baskerville is a free retina-ready masonry theme that’s great for sharing all different types of media, from quotes on all the way up to images and full posts. It’s lightweight, minimal, and great for displaying lots of content thanks to the masonry layout.
32. Ultra
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Ultra helps you create a business or portfolio site. It uses the free SiteOrigin Page Builder for easy layout control, as well as Smart Slider for sliders. If you want something clean and lightweight for a business website, this is a solid option.
33. xMag
Active Installs: 6,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
xMag is a free WordPress magazine theme that offers a simple design for blogs or news websites. It includes built-in social follow icons, as well as eye-catching styling for each post’s category.
34. Flat
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Flat is a free blog theme that offers a vertical navigation menu on the left side of your screen. This approach really puts the focus on your blog’s text, which is great if you’re writing lengthy posts.
35. Fukasawa
Active Installs: 10,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Fukasawa is another popular free theme from Anders Norén, who’s already made a few appearances on this list with the Hemingway, Hitchcock, and Baskerville themes. It features a minimalist masonry grid which makes it a great option for photographers or other visual artists.
You can also embed galleries directly in the masonry grid, which is a neat effect.
36. Himalayas
Active Installs: 8,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Himalayas is a free one-page parallax theme that makes a great option for businesses, portfolios, or even travel blogs. The one-page design features a variety of sections for you to control, and the blog layout has a big featured image that’s perfect for travel photos.
37. Modern
Active Installs: 3,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Modern is a free portfolio theme that’s accessibility-ready and built for readability. It gives you a bold full-width slider up top, with a filterable portfolio below to show off the different areas of your work.
38. Flexia
Active Installs: 1,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Flexia is a relatively new offering (at the time this post was published), but it’s got a great modern design and comes with lots of customization options in the WordPress Customizer. All in all, the styling of this one is great, and it’s also WooCommerce-ready if you want to use it to make a store.
39. Pixgraphy
Active Installs: 3,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Pixgraphy is a free photography WordPress theme that’s designed to either help you display, or sell, your images. The homepage features a great-looking masonry grid. And it’s also WooCommerce-ready if you want to integrate photography sales into your site.
40. Hueman
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Hueman (not human) is a popular free magazine and blog theme that comes with a ton of customization options via its free companion plugin and the WordPress Customizer. It’s also got a nice colorful look that stands out from many other magazine themes.
41. Virtue
Active Installs: 60,000+ | Rating: 5-stars
Virtue is a free multipurpose offering from Kadence Themes. It has built-in schema.org microdata to help you get rich snippets in Google, as well as a clean Bootstrap-based design and WooCommerce capability. It’s also packed with tons of customization options if you want to switch things up.
42. Responsive
Active Installs: 70,000+ | Rating: 4.5-stars
Responsive is built to be a flexible framework that you can build on with a huge variety of page templates, widget areas, menu positions, and other controls. It’s all grid-based, easy to customize, and…you guessed it – responsive.
Used/using any of these themes? Any other top-notch free WordPress themes you’d like to recommend?
