WordPress is my go-to CMS any time I’m creating a new site. It makes adding content, changing the aesthetics, and maintaining the site all quick and simple both behind the scenes and in the front.

Speaking of aesthetics, obviously the main thing which affects the look and feel of your site is your WordPress theme. There are tens of thousands of themes vying for your attention. And while there are a lot of great premium themes with more features than you can count, there are a number of free themes which can do everything you need and more.

So what is the best free WordPress theme in 2022?

There is a lot of criteria a good free theme has to meet to select the better and best ones. It should be mobile friendly and responsive, regularly maintained by the developers with updates, and should offer a lot of versatility. The best themes are highly customizable through an intuitive interface alone. And with respect to the thousands of premium themes out there, there are plenty of free ones which can handle most anything you throw at them.

I can only speak for myself, but after testing out dozens of popular themes, this is my pick for the best free WordPress theme (2022).

What is the Best Free WordPress Theme – 2022 Edition

For me, the best free WordPress theme in 2022 is the theme that’s powering the site you’re on right now: Astra.

At the time of this writing, it has a perfect 5 star rating on WordPress.

Note that Astra comes with a premium option with more features, but I’ve found that I can do everything I want with its free option. Its free option alone’s features stack up against the best premium themes out there.

Let’s do a rundown on why Astra is the best theme on WordPress at the moment.

Customization

Let’s start with the most important element: customization. With dozens of elements of your site to customize through Astra, you can create virtually any aesthetic and any style of site you want.

This is good, too, because Astra has over 1 million installations. So even with potentially a million other webmasters using the same theme, your site can look uniquely yours with all of the options it gives you.

Here is a snapshot of the macro customization bar for Astra.

Opening any one of these gives you drilled down control over the most important elements of your site.

The “Global” tab, for example, allows you to instantly pick the font style, size, and colors of your content.

It’s not a one-size fits all solution, either; you can pick different colors for your headings, text, links, etc. all specifically.

Building the perfect header is simple, as well, as you can easily fit your logo and its layout in the header from the customization section, as well.

Like many of the best themes, Astra also allows you to create custom headers by device. This way, you can have a unique header for desktop users, tablet users, and mobile users.

You can set custom sidebar/no sidebar layouts between your various content types, as well.

This allows you to feature a sidebar on your home page and posts, for example, while omitting it on site pages. You can adjust the width of your sidebar to your liking, as well.

One of my favorite customization options Astra free gives you out of the box is for the content you display alongside your posts both on the home page as well as on the posts themselves.

Where most themes make you install an additional plugin or mess with the theme’s code, Astra simply lets you tick various types of content on or off.

So say you don’t want the date published for a post to appear either on your blog page or on the post itself? Just uncheck it from the list:

Astra is also very compatible with virtually anything you try to integrate with it. One notable example is that it integrates with and is WooCommerce ready; so if you sell anything on your website, Astra is a good option.

Ease of Use

Even if it’s your very first day with WordPress, the CMS is built to be user friendly.

Astra is especially easy to navigate through the previously covered customization options.

Virtually anything you want to change about the look of your site can easily be found in this section.

It’s “Header Builder” is a great example.

Clicking on it from the customization menu brings up a grid like layout where you can pick and choose anything and everything you might want to display in your site’s all important header section.

Just clicking on a button lets you pick what you want to add to that specific spot, and you can click and drag existing elements to different areas of your header.

It’s a great example of the point and click simplicity which Astra boasts for completely taking the learning curve out of website design.

Speed

Astra is built to be extremely lightweight; on the front end they boast that it’s less than 50kb in size.

It’s also integrated with Schema.org code and is Native AMP, making your site more efficient for Google and mobile users.

Where speed and accessibility are essential for ranking well, Astra is built with this in mind.

Frequent Updates

Astra averages about 4 updates a month, making it one of the most maintained themes available.

With roughly weekly updates, this keeps Astra virtually bug free and up to date with the latest necessary features.

Just as importantly, this makes Astra one of the most secure themes by efficiently addressing any security vulnerabilities as they crop up.

Like I just talked about in my post on yearly website updates to make, you never have to worry about having an outdated theme with Astra.

Huge Community

If you ever do end up running into any issues with your site and need help, the fact that Astra is one of the most popular themes on WP means that there’s a huge community of people built in ready to help.

More than likely the issue you’re having has already been brought up and a solution is a simple Google search away.

The importance of this point cannot be emphasized enough; it’s almost like having the premium version on a support level.

In summary, Astra is the best free WordPress theme for 2022 because:

• It’s highly customizable for getting the look and feel you want from your site straight out of the box.
• It simplifies an already user friendly WordPress environment to make it accessible to virtually anyone.
• It’s lightweight and fast as heck and optimized to be search engine friendly.
• It’s as well maintained and frequently updated as any WP theme.
• It’s popularity makes finding solutions to any issues you come across easier than virtually any other theme.

You can grab Astra for free over at https://wordpress.org/themes/astra/.