The fastest WooCommerce theme (speed test)

Speed is incredibly important for online stores. We want to help store owners choose the fastest possible configuration so we’ve run a thorough speed test for popular WooCommerce themes.

The theme has the strongest impact on page speed. If you choose a slow theme, you’ll be wasting time and money from the very launch of your store.

To fully understand how we tested the themes, read the Testing Methodology section below the results.

Make sure to also check out the speed tests for page builders.

Theme Speed Test Results

Let’s go straight to the results. Results are median average, and in all cases but PageSpeed and YSlow score, the lowest is best.

Overall Results

This includes the median average of all tested subpages.

Theme	Version	Requests	Total page size	PageSpeed	YSlow	Fully loaded time (ms)
Suki	1.1.1	30	334879	90	73	689
Astra	2.1.2	42	441472	89	69	729
Woostify	1.3.6	46	457700	84	66	808
Retailer	3.0.0	59	679968	81	65	987
Ocean	1.7.1	47	550645	85	66	995
Flatsome	3.9.0	47	896673	84	68	1094
XStore	6.1.1	40	622508	87	70	1152
Divi Theme	4.0.3	43	646182	86	69	1154
Shopkeeper	2.9.6	65	774381	76	65	1270
Storefront	2.5.3	42	508060	86	70	1330
Woodmart	4.1.0	55	912412	85	68	1551
Porto	5.0.1	67	983649	83	65	1599

Summary

The fastest theme is Suki, followed closely by Astra. The best five themes all loaded below one second. We were unpleasantly surprised by the poor result of the Storefront theme. More than 1.5 seconds for a base installation is indefensible so we also strongly advise against using the bottom two themes.

If you are looking for a fast theme, any of the top three themes are a great choice.

Here are other details about the test:

• WordPress: 5.2.4
• Date tested: 2019-10-28

The following data is showing the results per page tested.

Homepage Load Time Results

This includes the median average of the homepage.

Theme	Requests	Total page size	PageSpeed	YSlow	Fully loaded time (ms)
Astra	40	549323	89	70	666
Woostify	48	584432	84	66	857
Suki	32	466948	89	73	869
Flatsome	42	972482	84	69	892
Ocean	45	664515	85	67	902
XStore	39	712056	86	70	1004
Retailer	53	743497	81	65	1010
Divi Theme	43	756522	86	69	1163
Shopkeeper	65	875679	76	65	1220
Woodmart	49	957382	85	68	1339
Porto	61	952501	82	65	1342
Storefront	41	629645	87	71	1643

Product Page Load Time Results

This includes the median average of the WooCommerce product page.

Theme	Requests	Total page size	PageSpeed	YSlow	Fully loaded time (ms)
Suki	27	202810	90	72	509
Woostify	44	330967	84	65	759
Astra	43	333620	88	68	791
Retailer	65	616438	80	65	964
Storefront	43	386475	85	68	1016
Ocean	48	436774	84	65	1088
Divi Theme	42	535842	85	68	1144
Flatsome	52	820864	84	67	1296
XStore	41	532960	87	69	1300
Shopkeeper	65	673083	75	65	1319
Woodmart	60	867441	84	67	1763
Porto	73	1014796	83	65	1855

Shop Page Load Time Results

This includes the median average of the WooCommerce shop page.

Theme	Requests	Total page size	PageSpeed	YSlow	Fully loaded time (ms)
Suki	28	184612	92	73	812
Storefront	39	358846	89	70	818
Divi Theme	36	445849	88	69	822
Woostify	56	397235	80	66	839
Ocean	55	490515	87	66	859
Astra	49	374186	91	69	876
Retailer	69	629360	83	65	904
XStore	33	418154	89	70	940
Shopkeeper	73	686046	74	65	997
Flatsome	52	787155	86	68	1232
Woodmart	58	785323	87	67	1468
Porto	71	809987	84	65	1469

Testing Methodology

To make sure the tests are reliable and consistent, we’ve set strict testing criteria.

The stores have had the least amount of plugins installed. Some require a specific page builder. Some require a plugin to get to the basic homepage design we test. We used Gutenberg blocks if the theme did not require a page builder.

Theme	Required Plugins
Astra	Astra Pro
Divi Theme
Flatsome
Ocean
Porto	WP Bakery
Retailer	Retailer Extender
Shopkeeper	Shopkeeper Extender
Storefront	Homepage Control
Suki
Woodmart	WP Bakery Page Builder, Slider Revolution, Woodmart core
Woostify
XStore	WP Bakery, XStore Core, Kirki Customizer Framework, CMB2

We created the homepage with the same sections – above the fold with image, three images for categories, featured products, and a text FAQ section.

Stores are hosted on WooCart hosting on Google Cloud Platform. There is no CDN running on the stores. Caching is enabled.

All stores have some other plugins installed: WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, SendGrid, and Redis Object Cache.

Stores have been set up with the WooCart Turnkey store settings. This gives all stores 35 demo products, 81 images for the products and homepage, and subpages for contact, about and legal.

Speed Testing

The speed testing service is GT Metrix. The test location is London (UK), and the browser is Chrome (desktop). We use their API, and run all tests in the same batch.

We run the tests five times per each page: homepage, product page, and shop page. The pages are mixed when testing so there are no consecutive tests for the same page builder.

We calculate the median result of the page load times.

Why median?

We calculate the median because it is far better than average for the use case of page speed testing. This way, the outliers have less effect on the final result, making the test more relevant. You can read more about this topic in this blog post.

If you’re interested in the full test data, take a look at the full spreadsheet.

Conclusion

We hope this test helps you with the selection of the theme for your store!

We’re running these tests regularly and if you want us to include another theme, contact us.