As we have mentioned in this post. It takes less than 5 minutes to install WordPress. But, it takes you hours or even days to find what is the best-suited WordPress theme for the website you have just installed. Choosing a WordPress theme becomes even tricky and challenging because there are tens of thousands of WordPress themes available on the official theme directory of WordPress. Not to mention marketplaces like Themeforest and CodeGrap which also offer WordPress themes.
What about the free option of WordPress themes?.
The official theme directory of WordPress is definitely the first destination to get free WordPress themes. As long you are not clicking the “Commercial Themes” tab while browsing themes over there, all themes can be used for free.
Other options?
If you can’t find a theme that suits you on the official theme directory of WordPress, there are lots of options you can go to. We have collected them in the list below. But, if you want to change your mind and want to use a paid theme instead, Newspaper is one of the paid WordPress themes we recommend. Not just because this theme is pretty cool. Rather, the team behind this theme what makes us convinced enough to suggest Newspaper for you.
Here is the list of 15 best places to download free WordPress themes.
1. WPExplorer
WPExplorer is our first recommendation if you are looking for a free WordPress theme. All free themes developed by the WPExplorer team are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). WPExplorer promises that there is no hidden code on the themes developed by its team. You can also remove any WPExplorer attributes such as copyright on the footer section. The theme collections offered by WPExplorer fall into several categories. You can find WordPress themes for blogging, portfolio sites, company profiles, and photography sites. There are about 19 free themes offered by WPExplorer. All of the free themes developed by WPExplorer are also available on GitHub. You can notify the team via GitHub if you find a bug on the theme you are using.
2. FlexiThemes
FlexiThemes is a great place to download free WordPress themes. It is probably a website with the largest free WordPress theme collections other than wordpress.org. At the time of writing, there are about 2,238 WordPress themes available on FlexiThemes, with over 12 million downloads. All themes are free to download for any purpose, including commercial. It’s just, if you use the free version of a theme from FlexiThemes, your site will contain a sponsored link on the footer section and you are not allowed to remove it unless you upgrade to the pro version. FlexiThemes has a great navigation feature to allow you effortlessly filter a theme according to your criteria. You can filter themes by color, category, the number of columns, and sidebar location.
3. aThemes
Leto, Airi, Cali, and Ignis are examples of the free themes offered by aThemes. They all have a modern look to build a modern website. Leto, for instance, is a theme that is aimed at developers who want to build an online shop. This theme works seamlessly with WooCommerce. Free themes developed by aThemes come with an option to change the color base. They are also integrated with Google Fonts to give you more font options. aThemes also has themes for blogs of news sites (Hiero, Solon, and NewsAnchor). There are about 15 free WordPress themes offered by aThemes in total.
4. ThemeIsle
ThemeIsle has about 30 free themes that you can use to build either a static or dynamic website. All themes are also modern enough. One of the themes offered by ThemesIsle is Zillah, which is great for blogging. This theme comes with a user-friendly mega menu, allowing you to arrange and organize your submenu content easily. It is also SEO friendly and works seamlessly with popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer and so on. ThemeIsle has a great team consists of about 20 dedicated members.
5. Colorlib
Colorlib has been around since 2013, founded by a frontend web designer and developer. Colorlib itself is a website that sells WordPress themes, but it also provides free WordPress themes with collections of about 14 items. According to a brief stats we read on its website, the free themes developed the Colorlib team have been downloaded over 3 million times, an indication that they have good WordPress themes. Colorlib offers free themes for blogging, e-commerce sites, and news sites.
6. Theme Freesia
If you are looking for a clean, SEO friendly free WordPress, one of the themes developed by the Theme Freesia team might is a good fit. The themes developed by Theme Freesia are released as the freemium products under the GPL license. You can use themes from Theme Freesia for free with an option to upgrade to pro to get more features. Some features available on the pro version are an option to set font size, color customization, slider, blog layout options and so on. Themes developed by Theme Freesia are also compatible with WooCommerce in case you want to build an online shop with WordPress. There are about 19 freemium themes offered by this website.
7. Rara Theme
Rara Theme is a great place to go if you want to build a website for your business or your clients’ business. There are free WordPress themes designed specifically for businesses like spa and saloon, restaurant and cafe, travel agency, to educational site. There are also free themes to build dynamic websites such as online magazines or personal blogs. In total, there are over 55 free WordPress themes offered by Rara Theme at the time of writing. Each of free theme offered by Rara Theme also offers the pro version with more features. Rara Theme also offers a demo for each theme to allow have a preview of what will your site look like after you activate the theme.
8. Acme Themes
The screenshot above is the example of a website demo of one of the free WordPress themes developed by the Acme Themes team. There is a big chance that the front page of the demo above is created with a page builder plugin. But, the free themes offered by Acme Themes are pretty cool indeed. At the time of writing, there are over 20+ free WordPress themes offered by Acme Themes. The option to upgrade to the pro version is also available on each theme.
9. ThemeGrill
ThemeGrill is especially a great place if you are building a WordPress-based website with Elementor. This website has several free WordPress themes designed specifically to work on Elementor. Zakra is one of which. The screenshot above is one of the examples of a website demo built with Zakra theme. You can see more demo examples on this page. In addition to Zikra, there are other free themes like Flash, Cenote, Spacious, so on. There are over 15 free WordPress themes offered by ThemeGrill in total. Some themes, including Zakra, are totally free while some are released as freemium themes.
10. Superb Themes
Creativeily is one of the free WordPress themes offered by Superb Themes. You can see its demo here. As you can see, you can use Creativeily theme to create a stunning, unique blog. This theme comes with features as follows:
- Custom Footer Colors
- Custom Header Text
- Custom Header Image
- Custom Header Color
- SEO Optimization
- Responsive Design
The pro version of Creativeily offers more features including Pagespeed Plugin, Easy Google Fonts, Hide Navigation, Search Results Header Image and so on. Keep in mind, Creativeily is just one example of the free themes offered by Superb Themes. There are about 30 other free themes you can download and use for free. Superb Themes claims that all of its websites are SEO optimized.
11. CyberChimps
There are about 17 free WordPress themes offered by CyberChimps. They all have been approved by wordpress.org. CyberChimps promises the following things over the WordPress the develops:
- Security
- Speed
- Support and updates
- Customizability
If four aspects above become your concern when choosing a WordPress theme then CyberChimps is a great option to go to.
12. AccessPressThemes
AccessPress Themes is a company based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The company sells WordPress themes and plugins. The company also releases some of its products (WordPress themes) for free. The vast majority of the WordPress themes built by the AccessPressThemes team come with parallax design. There are over 50 free WordPress themes offered by AccessPress Themes, including Vmagazine News which is designed for websites with a magazine concept.
13. RichWP
“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” ~Leonardo Da Vinci.
A quote from Leonardo Da Vinci above is the slogan of RichWP. Probably, that is why some of the themes developed by this team tend to look simple, yet elegant enough. Rich One is one which (take a look at the demo here). This theme, which is designed for blogging, only displays the featured page of each post on its front page, without excerpt. As a result, a website built with this theme tends to look like a photo gallery. Simple yet elegant. There are about 7 free WordPress themes offered by RichWP.
14. ThemeZee
ThemeZee is a great place to download a free WordPress theme if you want to build a dynamic website with WordPress. Most themes developed by ThemeZee have a concept of an online magazine. All themes are available for free with an option to upgrade to premium to get more features. They are licensed under the GPL license. ThemeZee itself developed by a German web developer Thomas Weichselbaumer.
15. AwoThemes.pro
The screenshot above is the demo of AcmePhoto, one of the free themes developed by AwoThemes.pro. It is a great theme if you want to build a photography site. You can use it to display your best shots. In addition to AcmePhoto, there are several other great themes from AcmeThemes.pro to build a photography website, as well as other website types like personal blog, magazine, educational site, and so on. AwoThemes.pro has over 100+ free WordPress themes. They are released under the GPL license.