The 10 Fastest WooCommerce WordPress Themes in 2021 (Tested)

Making WordPress load fast is important for all sites, but the stakes get even higher when you’re running an eCommerce store because there are all kinds of data linking slower page load times with lower conversion rates and higher bounce rates.

And if you want to make your WooCommerce store load faster, choosing one of these fastest WooCommerce themes, along with implementing other important WordPress performance tips (and using a good caching plugin for WooCommerce), will set your store up for success.

To help you find the fastest WooCommerce theme that can also help you create a great-looking, conversion-friendly eCommerce store, I went hands-on with ten options and collected some data.

Summary: The 10 Fastest WooCommerce Themes in 2021

If you just want a quick summary of the fastest WooCommerce themes, you can check out the table below. These are the basic results based on testing a single product page with the default WooCommerce data (sorted by page size).

At the end of the post, I’ll also share the exact setup that I used to test these themes:

Note – I’ll explain why all of these themes have such low mobile scores by default and how to fix it. TL;DR – it’s WooCommerce’s fault, not the theme, but WP Rocket can help you fix it with a few clicks 😊

Now, let’s dig into the themes – here’s a quick table for what the acronyms in the speed results list mean:

• PSI = PageSpeed Insights mobile test
• GT = GTmetrix desktop test
• WPT = WebPageTest desktop test.

In addition to the “classic” performance metrics, we added the Largest Contentful Paint and the Cumulative Layout Shift scores, two of the Core Web Vitals. Let’s dive into the speed & performance themes results!

1. Astra

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.6 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 4.8 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.2 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 274 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 37
• Performance Score (GT): 96%
• Performance Score (PSI): 66%

Astra is a popular freemium multipurpose theme with a super lightweight footprint. Out of the box, it’s under 50 KB and has no dependencies on jQuery, which is why it also landed a spot on our list of the fastest free WordPress themes.

One of the great things about Astra is its flexibility – it’s kind of like a chameleon that you can make match whatever design you want.

It also comes with full support for WooCommerce, letting you customize your store’s looks via the real-time WordPress Customizer. And if you upgrade to Astra Pro, you’ll also get tons of nice WooCommerce features like:

• Off-canvas menu for product filter/search
• Distraction-free and two-step checkout options (all you have to do is check a box in the Customizer)
• A slide-down cart icon that lets people check their carts without reloading the page
• Lots of options for store layout
• Built-in product quick view functionality
• Infinite scroll for products
• A sales bubble icon to mark products that are on sale
• Pre-built demo sites for WooCommerce.

You can try Astra for free at WordPress.org, but you’ll want the $59 Astra Pro version for access to all of the WooCommerce features.

2. GeneratePress

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.4 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 5.1 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.8 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0.11
• Size (WPT): 244 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 35
• Performance Score (GT): 86%
• Performance Score (PSI): 65%

Like Astra, GeneratePress is a performance-optimized multipurpose theme with built-in WooCommerce support.

In terms of WooCommerce functionality, GeneratePress doesn’t offer quite as many options as some other themes. But it still comes with everything you need to create a great-looking store including:

• A drop-down shopping cart icon that you can add to your menu
• AJAX add to cart button with a nice sticky panel that appears at the top of the page when a shopper adds a product to their cart
• Distraction-free checkout mode
• Customizer options to control WooCommerce styles and layout
• Options to control how upsells and related products appear

GeneratePress has a free version at WordPress.org. But if you want all of the WooCommerce functionality, you’ll need GeneratePress Premium, which starts at $59.

3. Page Builder Framework

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.7 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 4.7 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.1 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 206 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 34
• Performance Score (GT): 98%
• Performance Score (PSI): 67%

Page Builder Framework is a lightweight multipurpose theme that, as the name suggests, is designed to pair especially well with your favorite page builder plugin.

The free version already includes basic WooCommerce compatibility, but the Pro version upgrades that with advanced WooCommerce support for features such as distraction-free checkout, cart popup, off-canvas filters, Ajax add to cart, product image flip, quick view, and more.

The premium version costs $58.

However, one downside of Page Builder Framework is that it doesn’t include any importable WooCommerce demo sites like a lot of other themes.

4. Neve

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.6 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 4.7 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.7 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 261 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 35
• Performance Score (GT): 87%
• Performance Score (PSI): 67%

Neve is another popular multipurpose theme in the same vein as GeneratePress and Astra. Like those two themes (and many other options on this list), it also comes packed with WooCommerce-specific features and compatibility to help you use it to build a store.

Neve does have a free version at WordPress.org that includes basic WooCommerce compatibility. However, you’ll need the Pro version to access its WooCommerce Booster feature, which adds lots of new options such as quick view, wish lists, and lots more. You also need the Pro version to unlock the full library of importable demo sites.

The Pro version starts at $63.

5. Kadence

• Speed Index (PSI): 6.1 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 5.1 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 2.1 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 260 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 37
• Performance Score (GT): 77%
• Performance Score (PSI): 62%

The Kadence theme is a new multipurpose theme that has rapidly grown in popularity and gotten a lot of buzz in the WordPress space. It offers fast page load times, accessible code, a drag-and-drop header and footer builder, as well as full WooCommerce compatibility.

While the free version does have basic compatibility for WooCommerce, you’ll need the premium WooCommerce add-on to access advanced WooCommerce features such as “auto open side cart”, custom shop page built with blocks or page builder, Ajax add to cart, and more.

The premium version costs $69.

The developer, Kadence, also offers some WooCommerce-focused plugins that you can get with the full Kadence membership, such as Kadence WooCommerce Elementor to build custom shop, category, and checkout templates using Elementor, Kadence Woo Extras, and WooCommerce Email Designer. The full membership costs $169 and includes the theme and all plugins.

6. Blocksy

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.6 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 4.3 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.9 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 263 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 29
• Performance Score (GT): 88%
• Performance Score (PSI): 72%

Blocksy is a modern multipurpose theme with deep WooCommerce-specific features. Like Kadence, it’s a relatively new option that’s been getting a lot of attention.

It’s coded with modern languages, has a great sleek aesthetic, and comes packed with customization options in the native WordPress customizer.

Blocksy has a free version that does still include basic WooCommerce support. However, you’ll need the Pro version to unlock a lot of the more advanced features such as a floating cart, quick view module, off-canvas filters and cart, product share icons, and more.

The premium version starts at $49 for use on a single site.

Blocksy only offers one importable WooCommerce-focused demo site, but the demo site looks great.

7. Shoptimizer

• Speed Index (PSI): 5.8 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 5.4 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.7 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 283 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 39
• Performance Score (GT): 86%
• Performance Score (PSI): 64%

Shoptimizer is a premium WooCommerce theme from Commerce Gurus, who are the same folks behind the Create and Code theme shop.

Unlike some of the other themes, it’s 100% focused on WooCommerce. That is, it’s not a multipurpose theme.

As such, the developers were able to bake in a great design that follows the best practices for eCommerce conversion rate optimization, including:

• Distraction-free, optimized checkout
• Request a callback feature for individual products (great for expensive products)
• Option to add conversion-boosting microcopy by the Add to Cart button
• Sticky product details on scroll
• Trust badges
• Sale countdown timers

If you want your store to look great out of the box, this is a stellar option.

Shoptimizer only comes in a premium version. The list price is $99, but you can often find it on sale for $49.

8. Storefront

• Speed Index (PSI): 6.4 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 5.9 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.6 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0.048
• Size (WPT): 413 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 47
• Performance Score (GT): 90%
• Performance Score (PSI): 56%

Storefront is the default free theme that comes with WooCommerce. And beyond being a quite popular option because of that, you can see that it also helps your store load pretty quickly to boot.

It’s also just generally a good option to compare against the performance of other themes because it gives you a solid baseline for what to expect from a theme. And because Storefront comes straight from the WooCommerce team, you can be sure it has all the necessary functionality and follows good WooCommerce code practices.

Storefront itself is pretty basic in the looks department, but you can find tons of Storefront child themes if you want to switch up its design. Some of these Storefront child themes are free, while most will cost you $39.

9. OceanWP

• Speed Index (PSI): 7.7 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 7.4 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 1.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0
• Size (WPT): 440 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 52
• Performance Score (GT): 93%
• Performance Score (PSI): 46%

Like Astra, OceanWP is a popular multipurpose WordPress theme that includes tons of customization options and deep support for WooCommerce.

In fact, in terms of the “flexible multipurpose theme” niche, OceanWP probably has the most detailed WooCommerce integration of the group, with support for:

• Dropdown shopping cart icon
• Sales badges
• Distraction-free and/or multi-step checkout
• Sticky product details
• Product quick view
• Off-canvas menu for cart and filter options
• Lots of layout and style options in the WordPress Customizer
• Pre-built WooCommerce demo sites

OceanWP has a limited free version at WordPress.org. But for a WooCommerce store, you’ll want the premium version that starts at $39.

10. Divi

• Speed Index (PSI): 8.0 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (PSI): 7.4 s
• Largest Contentful Paint (GT): 2.9 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (PSI): 0.208
• Size (WPT): 635 KB
• HTTP Requests (WPT): 44
• Performance Score (GT): 49%
• Performance Score (PSI): 40%

Divi is not quite in the same league as a lot of these other WooCommerce themes when it comes to performance, but I’m still including the test results to give you an idea of how it compares and also because it does give you a lot of flexibility for building a custom WooCommerce store (you’ll need to decide whether or not that’s worth the performance trade-off).

In addition to out-of-the-box WooCommerce functionality and customization options, Divi also comes with a Shop module that lets you incorporate your WooCommerce products and pages into the designs you create with the included Divi Builder page builder.

Divi is available as part of the $89 Elegant Themes membership.

How I Tested the Performance of These WooCommerce Themes

To help you understand where my test results came from, let me share exactly how I tested these themes.

First, there’s the setup:

My test site is hosted on a $5 per month DigitalOcean droplet. I used a fresh WordPress install with only the WooCommerce plugin installed. I also imported the official WooCommerce sample data that WooCommerce now offers as part of its setup wizard.

Then, I tested the same product page at each store. That is, I’m not testing the homepage.

I did not import demo data for individual themes, so this test is for the default theme configuration. While this might not perfectly mimic a real-world situation, I think it’s the fairest way to compare different themes, and it should still give you a good idea of how performance-optimized each theme is.

To run the actual tests, I used three different tools to get a variety of data:

• PageSpeed Insights – this uses Lighthouse to collect a variety of metrics, including the new Core Web Vitals metrics. I’m sharing the mobile results.
• GTmetrix – this is also based on Lighthouse now after a recent change. I’m using a desktop device, though, and testing from San Antonio, TX.
• WebPageTest – I had it run nine separate tests and take the median value. The test server is in Dulles, VA and I’m using a 20 Mbps FIOS throttled connection. The test is run with a desktop device.

The Importance of Performance Optimization for WooCommerce Stores

You may have noticed a trend above – most of these themes had poor PageSpeed Insights scores in the mobile results. This isn’t the fault of the themes, as these themes are fast.

The issue is that WooCommerce product pages can be heavy, which is why it’s important to optimize them.

One of the biggest problems with the PageSpeed Insights tests was render-blocking resources, which came primarily from the WooCommerce plugin, not the themes themselves.

To fix these problems and unlock the true potential of your theme, you can use WP Rocket, which offers built-in compatibility with WooCommerce.

To give you an idea of the improvements that WP Rocket can make, take a look at the Astra theme. Here are its mobile PageSpeed Insights results before installing WP Rocket:

And then look at the huge improvement in all the metrics after installing and configuring WP Rocket:

Here are the differences in table format:

So just by installing WP Rocket and checking a few boxes, you can optimize WooCommerce performance to unlock your theme’s full performance potential.

Any Questions or Suggestions?

That wraps up our list of the fastest WooCommerce themes. Do you have any questions about these themes or how we tested them? Have a suggestion for a performance-optimized WooCommerce theme that didn’t make the list? Leave a comment!

And remember, choosing a fast WooCommerce theme is not the only way to speed up your store – WP Rocket is also fully compatible with WooCommerce and ready to help you speed up your WooCommerce store. WP Rocket will automatically configure its caching to avoid breaking key cart and checkout functionality, so there’s no need to play around with caching rules.