20+ Best FREE WordPress Themes and Templates for 2021

Are you looking for the best free WordPress themes and templates? Or not sure which theme to choose when there are so many!

If you’re starting a website on a budget, a free WordPress theme is a great way to keep the cost down.

There are thousands of free WordPress themes on the official WordPress repository. But that makes it hard to choose the best one. Therefore we have picked some of the best free WordPress themes for you.

Here’s what you’ll find out:  Business themes, multipurpose themes, portfolio themes, and blog themes. Some of them are also compatible with page builders such as Elementor, Visual Composer, and more.

Are Free WordPress Themes Worth Using?

When it comes to free WordPress themes, we’ve heard it a lot: free items are useless, low quality, and so on. This is true to some point, but not all.

Free WordPress themes are simple, easy to use, and are available to everyone. Some of them are not only awesome looking, but they provide functionality better than the premium themes. Another interesting fact is, if an installed theme doesn’t meet your requirement, you can switch to another theme without paying.

Also, they don’t include a lot of plugins, widgets, or other libraries. These make the theme fast. Similarly, most free themes are compatible with the latest and popular WordPress plugins.

The features are interesting, isn’t it?

When you can get all these functionalities on a free theme, why choose premium! The premium theme indeed gives more extended features as compared to free themes. But you can do many designs even using a high-quality free theme.

You can get more than 8800 free themes in the official WordPress themes repository.

List of Free WordPress Themes

1. Astra

A free WordPress theme Astra is the most powerful and features a rich theme. It is the most popular free WordPress theme with more than 1 million active installs.

This theme is suitable for a personal blog to business website making, it’s a fully customizable, responsive, and multipurpose theme. With a user-friendly design, this theme is lightweight (comes at 50KB), super-fast, and built with SEO in mind. 

It has a ready-made website that can be imported free with Astra Starter Sites plugin. In addition, this theme works well with plenty of page builders like Gutenberg, Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, and many more. 

It comes with a WooCommerce ready design to make an online store to sell products digitally. Also, with the minimum setup, you can have your own shop. You can customize your site using colors, fonts, and other eCommerce settings from theme customizer. 

Above all, this theme is forever a free theme. However, to add more features, it can be upgraded to the pro version. 

Features

• Tons of customization possibilities 
• Clean and stylish look
• Multiple home and inner pages layouts 
• Testimonials and Team section in home page 

2. OceanWP

It’s a multipurpose WordPress theme that is lightweight and highly extendable. This theme enables you to create any type of websites such as eCommerce, business, blogging, and portfolio websites. It’s a fast and responsive theme that has the best built-in SEO base.

WooCommerce support is fantastic with OceanWP. The design has shopping cart popup options and a shopping cart floating bar. In addition, with ready-made OceanWP templates waiting to be installed, you can make a beautiful website in just a few clicks.

It’s the most flexible theme as compared to others. Features include a static header, frontpage featured image. Furthermore, OceanWP works with most popular page builders like Elementor, Brizy, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, etc.

OceanWP is entirely free to use. But, if you want more extensions and features, you can upgrade to its premium version. 

Features

• Best SEO practices
• High customization options
• Ready to import demos
• Free and premium extension

3. Neve

A popular and best free accessibility-ready theme Neve is best among all the other free themes. It is compatible with WordPress Gutenberg editor and Elementor page builder. So, this theme can be used for all types of blogs, small businesses, startups, online stores, and portfolios.

It loads incredibly fast, and SEO optimized, making it easier to rank on the search engine. Similarly, you have full control over layouts and can be customized the way you want it to look like. You can change colors, fonts, upload your own logo, add a background image, and more.

It’s compatible with the popular page builders like Elementor and SiteOrigin. There are a lot of pre-made templates ready to go for any type of website. Also, it gives plenty of sections to share information from services offered to showcase team members and share testimonials.

If you’re looking for a WooCommerce ready, responsive, and multipurpose theme, then this theme is perfect.

Features

• Header and footer builder
• Multiple layout options
• Support Gutenberg Editor
• Accelerated Mobile Pages(AMP) Optimized

4. GeneratePress

One of the most highly rated free WordPress themes, GeneratePress is a multipurpose theme. The reason it’s so popular is its simplicity and fast loading speed. It’s less than 30KB and has a clean code.

You can use it to create a blog, business site, portfolio site, and also eCommerce site. The user-friendly features include color and typography customizations, nine widget areas, five sidebar layout, and five navigation locations. Also, it allows you to adjust many settings from the navigational menu to give the site a unique look.

Similarly, it’s compatible with all major plugins like Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce, and many more. From WordPress Customizer, real-time changes can be made to your site and can be seen as it updates on the live preview.

Features

• Well documentation and support
• Compatibility with page builder
• Modern design
• SEO friendly

5. Storefront

The developers of WooCommerce create this theme as the main WooCommerce theme to support online stores. Storefront is an eCommerce theme for WordPress that comes with features and flexibility. It gives responsive layouts, a flexible system, and excellent SEO performance.

It comes with a clean and simple design and it has a highly customizable possibility. The homepage template is organized well with options to display recent updates, top-rated, featured, and sale products. It has several layout and color choices.

The storefront has a few beautiful child themes that can be installed in the store. This adds additional functionalities and features to your site. Moreover, it creates a separate dropdown menu for mobile devices.

Features

• WooCommerce Integration
• Clean and simple
• Live customizer
• Multiple widget areas

6. Sydney

The most powerful business theme is Sydney. It’s an excellent choice for business-focused freelancers, agencies, and companies. Furthermore, this theme has a gorgeous design with mobile responsiveness and very easy to use.

By adding in-built blocks to the theme’s homepage, a professionally-looking frontpage can be designed for your website. It’s perfect for creating a single page, scrolling website, or fully-developed website. This theme is compatible with different WordPress page builder plugins like Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, etc.

This brings a lot of customization options like access to Google fonts, design control, logo transfer, full-screen slider, header image, and many more. Also, Sydney’s theme provides excellent documentation. It includes video tutorials to set up the theme and use its features. 

Features

• Full-screen Background
• Sticky navigation
• Custom Elementor block
• Translation Ready

7. Zakra

Super lightweight and with modern multipurpose options, Zakra is a powerful theme of WordPress. It comes with free starter sites (50+) and more in the future. After that, you can install any of the starter sites with One-Click and make a beautiful and professional site.

It’s excellent for business, construction, education, dentists, yoga, eCommerce, and almost any kind of site. This theme is compatible with all major page builders so you can create any layout which you want. Layouts and templates can be easily customized. Other customization options include 7+ widget areas, Gutenberg compatible, and plenty of typography options.

There is also plenty of space to feature services provided, showcase team members, testimonials, client logos, and more. The theme is GDPR (General data protection regulation) compliant i.e., it doesn’t store any sensitive information of site viewers or users, specifically from European regions. 

Features

• Elementor plugin Support
• Boxed and wide layout
• More header styles
• SEO friendly

8. Ashe

A fully responsive free WordPress theme Ashe is an excellent theme for magazines and blogs. It’s great for content-focused websites like travel, food, photography, cooking, and many more. It’s a highly recommended theme because of its flexibility and plugin compatibility.

Page can be designed with easy drag and drop page builder. You just need to add content. With great design, easy install, and a large number of options to customize, it’s very easy to use for beginners also. This theme offers features like text and image logo, full-screen slider, header image, GDPR support, and more.

It has a clean code and mobile design layout with WooCommerce shop support. Users can explore the limitless freedom of web design with unlimited color. Also, they support all types of media files to your site, like images, videos, GIFs, etc. 

Features

• SEO friendly
• Custom background
• Live WordPress customizer
• Display up to three linked images in the header area

9. Mesmerize

A flexible theme with a stunning design that lets you create a website easier than ever is Mesmerize. It goes well with a creative blog related to travel, food, politics, fashion, etc. With an easy install and drag and drop interface, Mesmerize is loved for its flexibility.

You’re given five header designs and many readymade templates. It has 30 ready-to-use content sections. Although the homepage is pre-designed, it can be customized in many ways. Other customization options include video and slideshow background, gradient layout, header content types, graphic separators.

This theme is best compatible with WooCommerce, so it can also be used for eCommerce sites. However, customization of a logo, typography, colors, and other features are unlocked with a premium version only.

Features

• Live editor
• Predefined design
• Font awesome icons
• Well documentation

10. Flash

A feature-rich free WordPress theme for creating brilliant websites is a Flash theme. It’s suitable for a business blog, portfolio, landing page, one-page style business site, and many more. Installation is easy and is more powerful than other themes with its features.

The theme completely unites SiteOrigin’s Page Builder and the Flash Toolkit plugin that makes the theme awesome. Image sliders can be included to display important content. Similarly, 11+ Custom widgets can be drag and drop, also reorder to a widget area.

Also, 15+ Ready starter sites can be imported to your site with a single click. Other features include multiple color options, WooCommerce support, numerous blog layout, Advanced Typography, and more.

Features

• Modern design
• Translation and RTL ready
• Highly customizable
• Multiple layouts, color options

11. NewsCard

A theme designed especially for magazines and news websites is NewsCard. It’s developed using the Bootstrap4 Framework. The best part about this theme is optimized for speed and highly customizable.

It offers frontpage templates, header image, sidebar page layout, banner slider. Similarly, Various elements like image sliders, videos, etc.. can be used for flashing the breaking/current news on the web page. It is compatible with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form bbPress.

Other features include uploading a logo, background image, select the sidebar position, social links, and custom CSS. This theme allows you to choose the specific layout for every post and every page display.

Although the premium version is available, most of the handy features come with a free version.

Features

• Built-in customizer
• Child theme compatible
• Multiple layouts 

12. Shapely

This theme is a feature-rich one-page,free WordPress theme with modern design. Shapely is made for personal blogging, landing page, portfolios, and eCommerce stores also.

It includes homepage widgets to add portfolio, parallax sections, testimonials, products, and services information, and more. This theme comes with pixel perfect design. Easy to install and comes with documentation to help setup page. 

It has a One-Click color picker to change colors of any style. Also, this theme provides a full-screen layout where elements like image, post, and other media files can be added. Additional features include mobile responsive, user-friendly, and easy customization.

Features

• Woocommerce ready
• Plugin supported
• Uses custom Elementor block
• Font Awesome icons.

13. Futurio

Highly customizable and lightweight theme Futurio is a free multipurpose WordPress theme. It’s suitable for business, creative, photography, eCommerce shops, blogs site, etc.

Dozens of starter sites are ready to import with a single click. It has 70+ theme options which provide many options while designing a site. Similarly, it’s compatible with Gutenberg and supports the AJAX search. 

Other features include fast and friendly support, custom content, menu layout. An unlimited blog layout can be created with Elementor. Futurio supports the WooCommerce plugin with many design options. Also, Products can be customized.

Features

• Plugin support
• SEO friendly
• Fast speed
• Custom background

14. Travel Agency

As its name suggests, this theme is purely based on travel. It’s made to create a travel booking website for travel companies, tour operators.

It provides all the requirements needed by the travel/tour website. Adding trips, tour packages, gift packages, travel destinations, and many more. CSS effect and animation make an eye-catchy appearance to visitors, so they are likely to spend more time on site.

With the multipurpose features, this theme can be used for fashion, art, blogs, or fitness sites. Modification on-site can be made through an in-built live customizer. So, you just simply need to install and import its demo content.

Travel Agency WordPress theme is speed optimized, SEO-friendly, and mobile-friendly. In addition, it runs on all web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, opera, safari, etc.

Features

• Attractive design
• Compatible with WordPress travel plugin
• Video tutorial
• Translation ready

15. Education Hub

Popular for the education-based sites, this theme is simple to look and feel. It’s designed for school, college, university, and other academic websites along with business and corporate sites.

Education Hub theme is built with a responsive layout, elegant and modern design. Layout and other theme options can be easily customized. Services of institutions can be highlighted through the featured slider. Therefore, with this theme, you can design a professional educational website.

Other awesome features of the theme include advanced color options with slider selection, custom CSS as well as custom background. Attractive and modern design, the theme also features stunning flexibility.

WooCommerce is supported only if you switch to the premium version.

Features

• Footer Widget
• Custom header image
• Fast and lightweight
• Full-width template

16. Bold Photography

It’s is a dark look multipurpose free WordPress theme suitable for creating a photography site. Bold Photography theme is perfect for those who want to promote photography creativity through the website.

With a One-Click demo import option, you can import a  beautiful demo site and make your photography site ready within a few minutes. Similarly, it has a beautiful gallery that displays images of different sizes. The blockquote is also unique and attractive to look at. It has strong WooCommerce support through which you can sell your products.

The homepage displays many features like portfolios, testimonials, featured content, and services, giving a professional look. Different elements across the slider can be enabled/disabled. Also, Testimonials are shown in the form of a slider. With professional features and compatible plugins, this theme is clean to look at.

Features

• Social media integration
• Different layout option
• Responsive
• Gutenberg editor

17. Gridzone

With stylish grid design Gridzone is a portfolio-based theme. It’s especially used by designers, writers, freelancers, and other professionals to express their best work to clients.

The theme allows for choosing light and dim color schemes. The layouts can be styled by changing the sidebar from left to right. This theme is flexible and has full support for Gutenberg blocks. Also,using Customizer, features like color, header image, menu, widget, etc. can be customized.

It shows the post in the grid structure in columns. With sidebar, it shows a three-column grid structure, and without sidebar, four columns can be displayed. You can also add links to social media profiles. Besides that, it supports background images that make the page more attractive and worth watching.

Features

• Child theme support
• Unlimited widget area
• Set the website max-width
• Font selection

18. Twenty Twenty

It is a default theme of WordPress. That is specially designed to support the Gutenberg Block editor. It shows the power of the Gutenberg block and gives a new editing experience. This is suitable for creative projects like art projects, business cards, and blogs.

With a single column layout, this theme uses Inter variable font. There is one file with all types of font families. It supports features like content width, post thumbnails, HTML5 elements, title tag along with custom background and logo.

It has three post/page layout templates. The center content column and a few typography changes are what make the style of this theme more perfect. In last, it focuses on Block editor for editing content, header and footer customization, and other additional customization.

Features 

• Flexibility
• Full block editor support
• Theme customizer

19. Orchid Store

A flexible and eCommerce WordPress theme is Orchid Store. It is suitable to build online stores like a furniture store, home decor stores, mobile and gadget stores, and many more. This theme is based on WooCommerce, the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin.

Layouts of the store can be rearranged using drag and drop interface. It comes with primary and secondary color options. Orchid Store has built-in options like mega menu, compatible with page builder Elementor, multiple widget areas, and many more. Widgets can be easily dragged and dropped to the available widget areas.

This theme is so easy to use and can be customized through WordPress live Customizer. This theme has eCommerce features like quick product view, Wishlist, WooCommerce categories widget, and more. Likewise, it has three demo options available: Default demo, Elementor demo, and RTL demo.

 Features

• Regular updates
• Fast load time
• 2 Column product listing in mobile view
• Compatible with page builder, Elementor

20. Polite

One of the WordPress theme packed with a clean and minimal design is Polite theme. With a brick model design and various blog post formats, this theme is amazing to look at. So, It’s perfect for blogs, online magazine news websites, and others. 

It has many blog page layouts and options to customize the page. Features include search alternative, off-canvas sidebar, promo box, footer choice, etc. The best part is it supports both the left and right sidebar. This theme includes header, sidebar, logo options, related post. 

It has custom widgets for an author, highlighted posts, social icons, and so on It uses three demos, quick support and regular updates. Multiple customization options include custom background, color, logo, custom-menu, etc.

Features

• Masonry layout
• SEO friendly
• Responsive theme
• Translation ready

21. Fairy

Fairy is one of the lightweight and easy to use WordPress blog themes. It comes with grid, full image and masonry layout for blog and archive page. Furthermore, it has attractive slider, promotional section, sidebar and many more. This theme is perfect for any types of blog.

This theme is fully responsive and cross-browser compatible. You can increase your website design and functionality using popular plugins like Elementor and WPForms. Because this theme support major and popular plugins.

It comes with demo data to make the site exactly like the demos. This free version comes with free support and regular updates. Premium version has added features and dedicated support too.

Features

• RTL ready WordPress theme
• 3 added custom widgets
• Child theme compatible
• Fast loading theme
• Very simple and easy to use

What to look for in a theme? Summary

When you start a search, you get a number of themes with different functionality. So, how’ll you select the best one that makes your site awesome!

However, picking the right theme is not easy at all. Don’t install themes looking at their design, focus on its feature as well. In this guide, you’ll get a summary of the things that must be considered while installing a theme.

i. Responsive design

The theme must work well on all devices. The website must display properly in all devices from desktop, tablets to mobile phones. Also, this makes the chance to show up in the Google search engine.

ii. Simple and Unique design

When choosing themes, look for simpler and new designs than other themes. That’ll make your content easy to understand.

iii. Easy customization

Customization helps to style the theme and design of their own choice. These make the theme more flexible and easy to use.

iv. Support essential plugins

WordPress has a huge number of plugins. So, make sure when choosing the theme, they must be compatible with the WordPress plugins that you need on your site.

v. SEO friendly

Theme plays a significant role in your site SEO. The poorly coded theme can affect your rank in google search. So, the theme must be used, which is SEO friendly.

Conclusion

And that’s the end of the article. We hope you have had some good use of this tutorial.

We discussed a lot about the free WordPress themes along with their different functionality. These themes give you a stylish and attractive look to your site.

Also, before installing the theme, browse around the collection, and select one that’s best for your site.

Do you have any questions about these free themes? Know any other themes better than these explained above? Let us know in the comment below.

You may also like our article on how to start a WordPress blog and make money online. You can also check a complete guide on WordPress SEO.

Also, don’t forget follow us in Facebook and Twitter.