Six Best Free Lightweight WordPress Themes in 2022

Your WordPress theme is the foundation of your website, which means it plays an important role in the loading speed of your website. Of course, you can use a lot of strategies to speed up your WordPress website 。 But your theme will always become a bottleneck.

In fact, I used to do some tests on my collection website. By switching to one of the lightweight WordPress topics in this list, my page load time was reduced by nearly 50%（ And the website has been well optimized before switching! ）。

So, Whenever possible , you always want to choose a lightweight WordPress theme. But – how do you find a lightweight WordPress Theme ？ I mean, no developers promote their theme as "slow loading", so how can you go beyond marketing copy and choose a theme that can be loaded quickly?

To make this choice easier, we have compiled this list of the best free lightweight WordPress topics. All of these themes will provide you with a basis for fast loading without costing you a penny. To prove this – I will install each of these themes on my test site and show you the file size and HTTP request data 。

catalog
What is the "lightweight" theme?
one GeneratePress
two Zakra
three Astra
four Airi
five OceanWP
six Page Builder Framework
7. Neve
Start using lightweight now WordPress Theme ！

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What is the "lightweight" theme?

Unless you test a lot of WordPress topics yourself, I realize that "lightweight" doesn't mean much without context. Therefore, before I show you the best free lightweight WordPress theme data, I will first show you average The performance of the topic in terms of file size and number of requests.

For this reason, I // WordPress.org 4 random popular themes were tested on（ these ones here no Lightweight theme ）。 I know this is not the most scientific experiment. But it should provide a good benchmark for your "average" theme performance:

• Newsmag – 848.3 KB and 37 requests
• Hueman – 582.9 KB and 21 requests
• Ashe – 1.6MB and 24 requests（ The file is particularly large because it uses the background cover image by default ）
• Activello – 612.4 KB and 22 requests

You can see a pattern there – WordPress Theme The average size is far more than 600 KB, and only one blank site's HTTP request lasts about 20 seconds, some of which can be easily exceeded.

For all the data in this article, I use a new WordPress installation with only the default content, No plug-ins 。 In addition, the file size number applies to the entire WordPress website – not just theme files. This is why you may see a difference between my number and the number placed by the theme company in its marketing copy.

one GeneratePress

• File size for a fresh installation ：108.4 KB
• Newly installed HTTP requests ：11

Right away, you can see GeneratePress There are some impressive figures in terms of "lightweight". Its number is far lower than your average theme, which will provide you with a good foundation.

Although GeneratePress It doesn't look like Out of the box , but the biggest advantage of this theme is its customizability, which is why it is a good multi-purpose choice.

With the real-time WordPress customizer, you can easily switch the title, layout, color, etc. of the site.

If you are a WordPress page builder fan, GeneratePress It is also easy to pair with the page builder, because you can get a metabox for each content, allowing you to:

• Turn off content titles or other information
• Change width（ For example, use the Page Builder to create a full width design ）。
• Disable Header/Footer to use Page Builder to design the entire page

If you are willing to pay, GeneratePress Premium Many new customization options will be added, as well as a large number of hooks that developers will like. Of course, all new functions are modular to retain GeneratePress Lightweight method.

GeneratePress Premium It also allows you to access the prefabricated site library that can be imported as needed.

two Zakra

• File size for a fresh installation ：96.8 KB
• Number of newly installed HTTP requests ：10

Zakra On the new WordPress installation, the file size is less than 100 KB.

Like GeneratePress Similarly, instead of providing a large number of out of the box styles, it has chosen to provide you with many WordPress customization controls to set according to your preferences.

From the WordPress customizer, you can control:

• Title Layout
• Single layout
• colour
• Typesetting
• wait.

In addition to these customized controls, you can also choose from more than 10 free entry sites. and GeneratePress Similarly, you can also get those Zakra A page level control that is very easy to pair with a page builder. You can:

• Change Layout
• Adjust Sidebar
• wait.

As far as the content you can disable on each post/page is concerned, it is inferior to GeneratePress Flexible:

None at present Zakra The paid version of - everything is 100% free.

three Astra

• File size for a fresh installation ：174.1 KB
• Number of newly installed HTTP requests ：9

Astra It is another lightweight WordPress theme, especially popular with people who use page builders.

I like it best Astra One thing is that it has a large prefabricated website library, which can be imported with a few clicks. These sites are using Elementor 、 Beaver Builder Or Brizy for customization. Although paying users can access all prefabrication sites, even free users can still install a large number of prefabrication sites.

In addition, you can also get a lot of detailed WordPress customization settings to precisely control the appearance of your website and the options of each post/page:

• Change content width
• Disable Title, Header, Accent, or Footer
• Change the number of sidebars
• Enable transparent headers

Astra It also has WooCommerce , Easy Digital Downloads, and some LMS The special integration of plug-ins allows you to control the appearance of plug-ins through the WordPress customizer. If you use one of the plug-ins, it will be a good bonus.

If you need more features, there is also a Pro version, which can add more modular options for only $59.

four Airi

• File size for a fresh installation ：543.6KB
• Number of newly installed HTTP requests ：19

Airi It is slightly larger than the first three themes, but it is compensated by the appearance of out of the box use. This is a good choice for enterprises, agencies and freelancers.

For further change, Airi Including multiple importable demo sites, all using Elementor Page builder creation, which means you can easily customize the template using simple drag and drop editing:

For other adjustments, you can use the real-time WordPress customizer.

If you need more features, Airi Pro will add more demo sites, as well as some new Elementor Widgets to extend with the following widgets Elementor Free version of:

• slider
• Back Grid
• And more

Professional edition also provides you with more WooCommerce Option.

five OceanWP

• File size for a fresh installation ：625.8KB
• Number of newly installed HTTP requests ：18

And GeneratePress And Astra Together, OceanWP Is the third member of these three themes, which are very popular with people who use page builders to build WordPress websites. This is the most important topic in this list, but it has many customization options to compensate for this.

It has many similarities with these two themes:

• It includes detailed WordPress customizer controls
• If you want to use the page builder, you can get page level controls to disable some information（ As long as you install the free supporting Ocean Extra plug-in ）

OceanWP 's post/page meta box is more detailed than other topics, and even allows you to access things such as bread crumbs and custom logos with specific content:

You will begin to see OceanWP Some of the bigger differences are in the advanced version. In addition to adding a bunch of importable site designs, the advanced version also focuses on adding functions, not just Astra And GeneratePress Such pure customization.

For example, the Advanced Edition includes the following features:

• Cookie notification
• Pop up login
• Instagram feed
• Modal window
• Social sharing

You can get all the advanced extensions for just $39.

six Page Builder Framework

• File size for a fresh installation ：206.8 KB
• Number of newly installed HTTP requests ：12

seeing the name of a thing one thinks of its function, Page Builder Framework Designed to pair with your favorite page builder.

Therefore, it focuses on providing you with the basic controls you need, and then allowing you to use the page builder for everything else.

With the WordPress customizer, you can set:

• Your title（ The advanced version adds more flexibility here ）
• Blog layout, including files and single articles
• Typesetting

You can also obtain these page level controls, allowing you to:

• Hide Page Title
• Disable Header and/or Footer
• Full width
• Change Sidebar Configuration

If you need more functionality, you can use advanced add ons to provide more detailed title/menu options, such as:

• Sticky Title
• Transparent Header
• Canvas menu
• Super Menu

And many other customization options, including more detailed customization of program controls.

The premium version costs $59.

In addition, all these topics should build a good lightweight foundation for you to build your website!

last Cool theme I hope this article will help you choose free lightweight WordPress Theme 。