Which Theme Is The Fastest?

The goal of this experiment is to determine which of the most popular WordPress themes is the fastest at loading blank pages and loading Elementor page builder pages.

For this test, I installed WordPress on a subdomain of WPSpeedify.com website. It is hosted on Siteground’s GrowBig plan with 6 sites currently sharing that plan’s resources.

I choose to do the test on shared hosting because that’s where most people will be hosting their site and using these themes. If you have dedicated hosting or a VPS, then your site speed should be even faster than what you see in the results below.

I choose the themes I did because they are among the most popular themes for developing WordPress sites AND they are lightweight and flexible. If I’ve missed a theme that you think MUST be included, let me know in the comments section and I’ll add it in.

First test: Blank page

In this first test, I have a vanilla WordPress site installed. There are no plugins.

For each test, I activate the theme I’m testing and run the test on GTMetrix.com. I run the test three times to take into account fluctuations in load speed. The raw data is at the bottom of this page. For the summary chart below, I averaged the load speed of the three tests for each theme and rounded up to two decimal places.

The themes are sorted alphabetically.

As you’ll see in the results below, the Neve theme has fastest load time and fewest HTTP requests made on a blank page. The Hello Elementor theme has the smallest file size.

Second test: Elementor template

For this test, I installed the free version of the Elementor and created a page using the “Agency” template. I set that page as the homepage and ran the same tests as on the blank page. In the results below you’ll see that again the Neve theme was the fastest, but the Hello Elementor theme had the smallest file size and the fewest requests.