Which WP Theme is Best? Fun With Theme Download Stats – WP Tavern

Toby Cryns
Today I embarked on a mission to figure out which WP.org themes are used the most and why. 
As you likely know, “Top 5” lists, as a rule, are generally very opinionated and based on fuzzy assumptions and non-standard use cases.  I want to assure you – this article is no exception to that rule.  
I had to make some very subjective leaps of logic with data to come to my conclusions.  I hope you’ll enjoy being part of this fun conversation.
The top themes in wp.org with a minimum of 5 million downloads ordered by WP Data Dashboard’s “usage rate” are Hello Elementor, GeneratePress, Astra, Storefront, and OceanWP (a higher “usage rate” is better):
(How WP Data Dashboard’s “usage rate” metric is calculated.)
For additional context, “usage rate” is the holy grail for commercial theme developers.  In ad speak, “usage rate” is similar to “conversion rate.”  
A higher “usage rate” means the theme owner’s marketing team gets more mileage from each annoying banner ad they force to the top of your WP dashboard.  It means, potentially, more money in the theme owners’ bank accounts with less effort.  
And, more important to us in the greater WP community, a higher “usage rate” on the theme means more people might actually like it!  (Imagine that!) So, based on that “usage rate” number, Hello Elementor is the most-popular theme in the wp.org repo.
Oh wait…
Below is an arbitrary metric I created called the “enthusiasm gap”.  This is the number of 1-star reviews divided by the number of 5-star reviews (lower “enthusiasm gap” is better):
GeneratePress and OceanWP seem to have rabid followings based on this enthusiasm gap metric.  Astra also has a great enthusiasm gap at 2%.  But Hello Elementor…14% – that’s…high compared to the competition.
Theme reviews are, of course, totally subjective and can be manipulated by marketing pushes.  
However, it’s also possible that a high volume of 5-star reviews is actually an indicator of enthusiasm for the theme. For example, OceanWP has 5,412 reviews, whereas Hello Elementor has only 90 reviews. 
What’s that say about those particular themes?  Who knows?!  It’s not clear why OceanWP has 60x the 5-star reviews of Hello Elementor, but surely something good is happening over at OceanWP, right?  
And maybe Hello Elementor is awesome despite its low enthusiasm gap numbers. It is, after all, dominating the “usage rate” metric, which is the metric WP Data Dashboard endorses.
Perhaps my “enthusiasm gap” metric is pointless dribble that I made up on the spot as I wrote this article and didn’t run it through a deeper analysis to learn if my assumptions were sound. If you believe this reality (and, admittedly, I won’t deny it), then speak to me as if I were a golden retriever and let me know what’s wrong with my amazingly mathy “enthusiasm gap” metric.*
To my great surprise, some members of my local Minneapolis-St. Paul WordPress User Group community disagree with my somewhat arbitrary and very mathy choice for the best theme available.  What gives?!
Arguing about why one theme is better than another is part of the fun of being a member of the WP community.  
Metrics like “usage rate” and “enthusiasm gap” add context in much the same way that “Free Throw %” does in basketball or “Shots Per Game” does in soccer.  That is, these numbers don’t tell the whole story, but they sure can lead to some fun conversations!
I asked my local WP user group members what their favorite themes are. Below are some of their opinions.
“Beaver Builder (specifically using the Beaver Themer plugin) because it is almost just as powerful as creating my own theme (what I used to do before Beaver Themer was released), but with the fast, easy and powerful features of Beaver Builder. I’m never going back!” – Barbara S.
“Impreza.” – Aaron H.S.
“I also use Beaver Builder/Themer, but not the theme. I’ve always used Genesis and still do. I use Mai Theme as my base, much to the horror of the dev who never intended it to be used with a builder. Sometimes I try to use the block editor on a basic page, but it still feels clumsy and unintuitive to me. I love Mai Theme because of the scalable fonts and spacing and the navigation is very well done.” – Jodi S.
“My favorite theme is either “Hello Elementor” (the barebones vanilla theme when building a site with Elementor), or just using Bricks.” – John V.
“+1 for Impreza! Have built 20-30 sites with it.
My 2.7 cents!” – Matt C.
“My favorite theme is Enfold. They have a really nice drag-and-drop system and the theme is super versatile. Good customer support and good performance improvements as browser changes are implemented.” – Beth B.
“I’ve been a Divi user since almost the beginning. It also has a drag-and-drop system and a visual builder that allows edits from the front end as well as the dashboard.”—Lisa D.
“I have been using Astra theme a lot. Got a lifetime license for Astra Premium & Astra Pro which has been so worth it for fast customization.” – Donna
“We have been using Astra a lot for the past three years or so. It has great benefits and a few unfortunate flaws, but on the whole it is a win for us. Astra is a more traditional theme than Genesis, easier to build child themes with, but it has a huge depth of hooks, making it just as flexible and customizable for our clients as we found with Genesis years ago.” – Eric C.
“GeneratePress is a powerful lightweight framework.” – David S. 
I used WP Data Dashboard as my data source. 
WP Data Dashboard pulls raw data from the WP.org API and then give each theme a “usage rate”, to determine whether or not people actually like the theme enough to use it.  [See specific calculations.]
“While the data from the data has it’s limitations and should be taken with a grain of salt, the available numbers paint a pretty clear picture of what users actually want to use,” says WP Data Dashboard founder, Hendrik Luehrsen said.
For example, Twenty Fifteen theme has a very high download count but very low “active install” numbers – It therefore has a very low “usage rate” on WP Data Dashboard.  
Conversely, Twenty Twenty-Three theme, being a relatively new default theme, has both a high download count and high “active install” count, giving it a high “usage rate”.  
“A WP core update is a download of a ‘Twenty’ theme,” said a member of the WP Core team.  “Even though the theme might not be in use, it’ll get a lot of downloads.”
Therefore, for the purposes of this article, I ignore all the default “Twenty” themes since their download counts are inflated:
Two final caveats on the data:
Still, this is the best data we’ve got, so let’s have some fun with it.
Keep it light and share what your favorite theme is and why in the comments below.
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Twenty Twenty Three is my favorite theme, although Twenty Twenty Four has some interesting stuff.
I have several sites using Impreza with WP Bakery. I also use The7 on a few sites, along with Roam and Salient. All with WP Bakery as the page builder. Those are my most used themes. I find all of them to be attractive, stable, and well supported themes. The rest of the themes I use are one offs because of certain functionality or subject matter.
What do you do when asked by your clients to replace the theme by a different theme? Can you keep the contents and only change the frontend without (serious) issues?
Switching themes almost always requires a complete rebuild using the new theme’s toolset. One of the biggest selling points of using the Full Site Editor and Gutenberg instead of other themes is that, in theory, you’ll be able to switch to a new theme and not need to rebuild the content.
Yes, of course, you can keep the contents. The theme is really about the design. Some things might need tweaking afterward, but you wouldn’t frequently change the theme. That’s something to do every 5-7 years when the current one starts to look outdated. I found that when I tried to use a Blocks theme, I was never able to get it to look as professional as the traditional themes using WP Bakery. My clients need their websites to look polished.
KadenceWP! Light, fast and packed with well thoughtout efficiencies, making WP usable without overlaying a page builder. Ben and his team are very responsive with support and to feature requests.
That’s awesome! I find it’s much easier to teach my clients how to use WP Bakery than how to use the WP block editor.
Interesting that you find WP Bakery easier to teach vs the block editor. I’m curious to know how the WP Bakery learning curve differs from other builders.
My vote for GeneratePress 👍🏻
Another vote for GeneratePress
The popularity of “Hello Elementor” probably has less to do with the theme than with the page builder? The trend “Block Themes” vs “Classic Themes” would be interesting. Or the best new themes and not always just the top dogs. Or the best themes for special purposes, niche themes etc.
The best WordPress templates are definitely Kadence and GeneratePress
Like most I’ve used many themes over the years but Impreza I’ve grown to just dislike. But that’s mainly because I took over a website using it and it was horrendous.
I use X and X-Pro on a few sites and really like the theme, but the learning curve is pretty steep.
And I use Zeen, which I like a lot but the support and updates have sadly become very questionable in the last year 😣 If anyone has a good alternative to that I’m open to suggestions!
Kadence all the way!
Why don’t I see Flatsome even though it’s the most purchased theme?
Where can I find data about the most purchased themes? The data on WP Data Dashboard is pulled from wp.org, so it only includes free themes that are available from that site.
Flatsome would be sold at themeforest. Do they share info on most purchased themes of the year?
Twenty Twenty Three is the best and most flexible theme imho. However, I usually prefer to build my own themes. I have yet to understand how anyone can prefer code- (and usability-)monsters like DIVI or Enfold, but I’ll probably never find out …
Ocean wp by far. With lifetime unlimited pro license plus wpstackable blocks. Boom.
As I said to Toby GeneratePress is a powerful lightweight framework. Works extensively through Classic Customizer mode, provides a comprehensive modular framework, and works with blocks. What’s not to like?
Besides Hello as a blank theme, Elementor seems the popular alternative to Gutenberg.
I prefer WP Bakery. I think those are the two most widely used.
I went from long-time Astra user to long-time Neve user (excellent theme) and then decided to have a go with an fse block theme and now use Ona fse theme as a basis. Fun, too.
The most interesting part of this to me is when the author polled his local users group. The replies from actual people who build sites sound like they avoid Gutenberg like the plague.
I hear similar things among the website builders who I talk to. Nobody wants to be part of an experiment when actual work needs to get done.
Yes, this. I’m a web developer, and my websites are for my clients who need to be able to update them with ease. They don’t need a million setting options. I do all that. This all seems to have made the interface overly complicated. Even the widgets! I install Classic Editor and Classic Widgets on every site I build. And that’s just for me. My clients don’t have access to that. I built one website for myself using Blocks and I won’t do that again.
All time favorites include Blask, Designer, Moka & block theme Assembler (current).
I like your post, And I am also using the Generate press theme.
Thanks for sharing keep it up more.
I tried to tackle this question before not by looking at the download or usage numbers but by finding out which theme is the fastest loading and has the best PageSpeed mobile score. Before I used Divi but after focussing on speed now I mostly use Breakdance.
Matt, I like your methodology! In fact, I ran a similar analysis a few years back and landed on Beaver Builder. Here’s my detailed WP theme speed analysis: https://themightymo.com/how-to-optimize-your-wordpress-site-for-google-pagespeed/
Fwiw, I hadn’t heard about Breakdance until your comment.
Wow, thanks for the link to the detailed analysis. I love the case studies and that you’ve even included a comparison of managed WordPress hosting providers. May I ask if you are still using Beaver Builder until today?
As far as I understood from the highly emotional discussions in the Breakdance Facebook group right now the majority of people using Elementor is seen as unenlightened flock and the clever people are either using Blocksy or Breakdance, which is an easier version of Oxygen if I understood correctly. It would be cool to do an updated version of your case study with those newer page builders. Recently I also bought LiveCanvas because I love the concept, although it is a bit too technical for me personally.
Replacing a theme by another is a nightmare and frustrating. Almost impossible to do.
When do developers change this paradigm?
My favourite is OllieWP. Its clean, fast and comes with a nice Onboarding Wizard Plugin.
Thanks for this update you shared with us
Replacing a theme by another is a nightmare and frustrating. Almost impossible to do.
Thank you for the fascinating exploration of WordPress theme download statistics to identify the best options!
I’ve really enjoyed reading the comments provoked by this article. It’s so good to see the spectrum of opinions on this issue.
From a data analytics and report perspective, I would like to see the “About the Data” section towards the top of the article as a preface to the data analysis. I wanted to know right away why default themes were ignored.
I like the approach and the “Enthusiasm” metric. I think it could be less subjective with a bit more explanation of the calculations and why they matter and how you come to the results. Like a Methods section.
Let’s see a review of the best default themes next! Like a top ten countdown to the best one.
In my opinion, Twenty Twenty Three is the most optimal and adaptable theme. But generally speaking, I like creating my own themes. I’m not sure how someone could favor code- (and usability-)monsters like DIVI or Enfold, but I’m not likely to find out.
My favourite for some time is Qi theme, but I use Hello as well on some project where I have more time to develop it from the scratch.
Hello theme is one of the best for sketch WordPress website design
Out of all the WordPress themes, I like Flatsome the most because it is simple, easy to use, and has a large community of supporters
Over time, I have tried various themes: Neve, Astra, Ocean. I was then impressed by GeneratePress. In my opinion, it is an excellent theme with outstanding support.
This was really interesting! I always see Astra at the top of download lists, so it’s surprising to learn it doesn’t have the highest usage rate.
I’ve been using OceanWP for my projects and love its flexibility. The enthusiasm gap metric you mentioned is a cool way to look at theme popularity – it makes sense that more 5-star reviews could mean more happy users. Thanks for sharing this breakdown!
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