After dozens of hours Googling for the best free WordPress themes, I’ve found the perfect ones for your personal blog, affiliate blog, or just general blogging.
This is your lucky day, it’s all here, nothing else for you to do – just pick the theme you like and start your blog today.
The themes I’ve found are among the best ones on the market in 2024 among thousands of them available on the WordPress.org website.
Some free WordPress theme authors don’t publish their theme on WP theme repository for whatever reason and (obviously) I didn’t include those in my research.
To keep your website safe always download free WP themes directly from the official WP website.
If you’re asking yourself how do I know these free WP themes are your best bet?
Easy!
I’ve been blogging since 16 years ago, I have a web design agency for more than 6 years and I’ve been using WordPress for as long as I can remember.
Is that good enough for you?
No?
Need more proof?
Ok.
The main criteria I used to hand-pick these WordPress themes
Before I decided to include these themes in this very article, I put them all to the test and made sure all of them passed the below list of my strict criteria:
- Typography – Modern, easy to read, big enough
- Design style – Simple, modern, clean
- Layout – Mostly with sidebars available or without sidebar
- Header and navigation – Easy to use, clean, nicely designed
- Loading – Fast loading for Google and reader pleasure
- Headings layout and HTML title tags – I made sure every theme listed here has basic on-page SEO coding and on-point
- No page builders – Pure themes without Elementor or other page builders included
- Actively supported – When things go wrong what matters is the theme authors will be there for you if you need any help or questions, and these themes are all still monitored and supported by their respective authors
Regularly updated– Even if a theme isn’t updated regularly that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work with the current WP core version (I’ve tested them all, and they all work). From my experience, if the theme is well-coded it can work with future WP core updates without issues so don’t worry about it for the time being.
Besides all that mentioned above, I wanted a theme that’s not too distracting with a ton of bells and whistles making it harder to consume the content.
As a blogger who recently started a few new blogs, I realize it can be hard to choose a theme and before you know it, you end up spending countless hours just searching and researching and not making a decision.
That is why I wanted to share this list of free WordPress themes that are perfect for regular bloggers and especially affiliate marketers.
Table of Contents
The idea with this article is to help you pick a theme that you like from the ones I listed below and just go with it.
Don’t go to Google, don’t go to another website, don’t go to Theme Forest, just pick one, install it, and start writing articles.
Remember, your new blog probably won’t be visible or popular for months to come.
By that time you can easily switch to another theme if you like (and don’t even think about it before you have at least 50 articles published).
*Some theme authors have more than one great free WP theme in their stores, so I’ll mention them in a group, rather than pointing out every one of them individually.
Here we go, these are the best free WordPress themes for bloggers (in no particular order).
1. ALX Media WordPress Themes
This guy… Alexander Agnarson is his name, is the author of all these amazing free themes.
I mean, I’m not sure what’s his agenda nor why he makes so many great-looking WordPress themes and just gives them away for free, I honestly don’t know, what I do know is that I LOVE this guy because of it.
I’m currently using his Shapebox theme on one of my other blogs and it’s perfect, feature-rich and it looks great.
It even has a dark/light mode switcher available.
At the moment ALX Media has over 40 free WordPress themes on their website and they all look really nice.
When you check them out you’ll see they are all similar in a way where many of them have the same style of sidebars, related post features, comments, and other things, but still have a bit different design to make them all unique.
My personal favorite ALX WordPress themes are:
Make sure you check the rest of his 40+ WordPress themes on ALX website.
2. Anders Norén WordPress Themes
Alexander from ALX Media is not the only one who makes and publishes a ton of WordPress themes for free.
Let me introduce you to Anders Norén, a great designer from Sweden.
If you have ever been to Sweden (I have), you’ll notice Scandinavian influence in Andres’s theme designs.
It’s almost like IKEA’s style, with a bit colder feeling, hard lines everywhere, and very clean and orderly made layouts.
I almost ended up using one of his designs for this blog because a few of them were just what I wanted.
My favorite free WP themes from Anders are:
- Lovecraft WordPress theme – Download – Demo
- Wilson WordPress theme – Download – Demo
- Rowling WordPress theme – Download – Demo
I just think these three are great for new bloggers, plug’n’play and you are ready to go.
Go and check Anders’ website and see a few other of his great WordPress free themes.
3. Compete Themes WordPress Themes
Have you ever visited the About page of a professional website from some company?
Boring, right?
We do this, we do that, here’s our team, history, blah blah blah…
What got my attention – besides great-looking WP themes – was the About page from Compete Themes, it’s not something you see every day.
Ben Sibley, the man behind Compete Themes, explains in a very creative way why he decided to make WordPress themes the way he did.
He understood what the main problem with most WP themes these days is – bloat, too many features, complicated to use, time wasters – and decided to make themes that are the complete opposite – without too many distractions, with a seamless experience and simple customizations.
We use themes to speed up the website-building process and not to prolong it – something that many theme designers forgot was the goal.
Install it, set it up quickly, and start publishing content.
Your visitors are not coming to your website because it’s so pretty and has the latest plugins installed, they come to find solutions to their problems and to learn something.
On the Compete Themes website, you’ll find almost 20 free WordPress themes, and each of them has its Premium version with more customization options.
For starters, you’ll be perfectly fine by just using the free ones.
And some of my favorite WordPress themes by Compete themes are these:
Other themes are okay, but not to my taste.
Feel free to check them out maybe you’ll find something you like.
4. JustRead WordPress Theme
If someone chose a perfect name for its product, that’s Greta Themes with their Just Read theme.
It’s a WordPress theme for a blog that’s meant to be read – no mumbo jumbo, no bull, straight to the point.
The homepage, as you can see from the screenshot, shows the latest posts in a nice, clean grid-style layout.
That’s nothing new of course, but the styling, chosen fonts, spacings, everything is laid out perfectly making it super easy on the eyes so that your readers can consume your content faster than ever.
A possible downside for some of you is that this theme doesn’t have a sidebar.
Other than that, it’s a great-looking theme with big fonts so the single post pages look really professional and almost newspaper-like.
If you don’t need the sidebar I strongly suggest you check it out and use it on your blog.
5. GeneratePress WordPress Theme
And here we go, a theme that’s a number 1 WordPress theme for bloggers to at least 90% of blogs who do these kinds of “top 10” articles.
GeneratePress has been downloaded over 600k times so far, which is impressive.
All those users who downloaded it may be right, this theme is indeed really good, super fast loading, and looks nice.
However, it only looks nice after you style it up a bit with its customizer, otherwise, it’s not that special.
See below how GeneratePress theme demo looks after it’s just been installed on a freshly installed WordPress blog.
To be honest, I added a few things in the sidebar which is empty upon the installation.
This theme doesn’t belong to this list BUT I decide to include it just because some of you might like the simplicity of it and might use it without fiddling too much with the main design.
And true, it is easy to customize it, with a lot of options available, especially if you get the GeneratePress Pro version where you also have some starter theme to install. But out of the box, it doesn’t look that special or premium.
I’m still going to recommend it because it has everything you need from the box and is content-oriented with a simple header/navigation and a sidebar.
For some that will be enough and it’s a great starting point.
IMHO there are nicer themes I recommended in this article, though you won’t make a mistake if you decide to go with free GeneratePress (if you prefer that basic clean look).
You can download GeneratePress from WordPress theme repository but the actual demo is nowhere to be found, when you take a look at the the above screenshots you’ll understand why – there’s not much to show.
P.S. There’s a premium version of GeneratePress that offers even more customization options and a wide selection of pre-made theme, more on that in one of my future articles.
6. Brilliant WordPress Theme
Here’s another brilliant WordPress theme (pun intended) by Design Lab Themes.
In a way, it’s similar to the GeneratePress theme mentioned above, with the main difference in the header area, since here we have the logo on the top and navigation centrally aligned beneath it.
The colors are pretty neutral, which is good, it means you can easily give it a touch of your own style and it will still look great, without messing with the code too much.
What I don’t like about this theme is the font used, or the font combo, not sure what it is but it just doesn’t look right. If I were to use this theme I’d try a different font combination.
Other than that it’s a nice-looking, simple WordPress theme meant to be used for a personal blog.
And don’t be fooled by the slow loading on the demo site. For some reason, they used gigantic images on every blog post as featured images so it takes ages for them to load.
7. Flexia WordPress Theme
Well, this one is a hidden gem.
It was developed by WPDeveloper company which turned more to their plugins and other products that they don’t even promote this theme on their website as much as their other products.
Guess what, they are using it on their website, so it must be good, right?
And it is.
I tested it and it has a bunch of helpful features for customization. It’s a breeze to get what you want from it, whether it’s different headers, sidebar options, content layouts, and more.
Flexia theme is one powerful WordPress theme that I was positively surprised, I honestly didn’t expect so many options for free.
And no, it’s not complicated, you’ll get the look you need from your blog super fast.
Give it a chance – highly recommended.
Note: To be honest… This theme doesn’t belong in this article for the same reason as GeneratePress – it takes some time to customize to get the desired look. Other themes in this article are ready to go right away and I recommend them if you are a brand new blogger. Leave this theme for another blog when you already have some experience making websites.
And yes, it hasn’t been updated for a few years or adapted for the latest WP version but it’s still supported, meaning, if you get stuck you can still ask for and receive help from theme authors.
Please don’t judge this theme by its demo, because it’s simply horrible. The theme itself is great, trust me.
8. Sydney WordPress Theme
Ah, I was suspicious of this theme when I looked at the demo, and the fact that it’s a freemium product made by Athemes and not all features are available but I gave it a shot anyway.
When I installed it I went to check what kind of options it has and boy there’s a lot of it in there, multiple options for layouts, here section, header area, you name it they have it.
I’ve been a WordPress used for over 15 years now and damn how did it evolve together with themes that give your so many options to customize it and create your look and style.
Sydney WordPress theme – Download – Demo
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of themes give you these kinds of features and options, but not many of them know how to make it user-friendly. Either that or they overcomplicate things.
So I’ll admit I was wrong about Sydney, it’s a great theme, that’s why I included it in this article, feel free to give it a try.
Honorable exclusions
If you did your research on Google you’ll notice some of the themes mentioned everywhere else are missing from this article.
Themes like Neve, Astra, WP Ocean, or Hello theme from Elementor.
I don’t have anything against these themes, I just don’t think they are newbie-friendly.
You can’t just install them and start publishing your articles. No, you have to heavily style them first and invest a significant amount of time to get what you need.
Yes, they have all the bells and whistles, but who needs that when starting out?
No one.
So instead go with my recommendations above, pick the one you like, install it, and start writing and publishing your articles.
You can always switch themes later.
What next?
I almost got sucked into the vortex of WordPress themes, no kidding.
You know the one when you go to the themes section in your WP dashboard and they just start infinitely showing up.
So many options it’s frustrating – and almost scary.
Don’t fall into that same trap, install any of the themes I mentioned above and just start blogging.
At some point in the future I’ll write another article about the best premium WordPress themes for blogging, but don’t wait for those and just start with these free ones if you like them.
What’s your favorite theme from the ones above?
Let me know in the comments below.
