Trying to find out what\u2019s the fastest theme between Divi vs Astra?<\/p>
Both of these themes are incredibly popular multipurpose options that are highly customizable. You can use them for literally any type of WordPress site, from a blog to a portfolio, eCommerce store, business brochure website, online store, and lots more.<\/p>
Divi comes with its own built-in visual, drag-and-drop editor (Divi Builder). Astra is built to pair with popular page builder plugins such as Elementor and Beaver Builder or with the native WordPress block editor.<\/p>
In terms of customization and flexibility, you won\u2019t go wrong with either theme. But there\u2019s another important consideration for building your site \u2013 performance.<\/p>
How quickly your site loads affects everything from user experience to SEO, conversion rates, and more. As your site\u2019s foundation, your theme will play a big role in your site\u2019s performance.<\/p>
In our Divi vs Astra speed comparison, we\u2019re focused on that one single metric. That is, will Divi or Astra get you a faster-loading WordPress site?<\/p>
To answer that question, we\u2019ll run our own tests. Let\u2019s start by talking about how we\u2019ll test these two themes, and then we\u2019ll share the data and the conclusions you can draw from it.<\/p>
Note <\/strong>– we originally tested these themes and wrote this comparison in March 2021. However, in August 2021, Elegant Themes released<\/a> a huge front-end performance update for Divi in version 4.10, which greatly reduced Divi’s weight. For that reason, we completely re-ran our Divi vs Astra performance tests in November 2021 to account for those changes. <\/p> To test Astra vs Divi performance, we\u2019ll run four separate tests for each theme in two basic scenarios.<\/p> Scenario #1<\/a><\/strong>: We\u2019ll test just the themes themselves in their out-of-the-box states. That is, before adding any content or making any changes, which theme is more optimized? We activated each theme on a fresh WordPress install and ran the test right then.<\/p> This scenario isn\u2019t realistic for a real site, but it gives you a good idea of each theme\u2019s baseline optimization.<\/p> Scenario #2<\/a><\/strong>: We\u2019ll build a simple page with each theme\u2019s builder. For Divi, we\u2019ll use the bundled Divi Builder. For Astra, we’ll install and use Elementor.<\/p> While you can use Astra with the native block editor, most of Astra\u2019s starter sites are built with Elementor, so we feel that it\u2019s the fairest choice. It\u2019s also the only way to get Astra to fully match Divi\u2019s visual, drag-and-drop design, so it’s fairest from that perspective, too.<\/p> With that being said, if you’re worried about performance, you’ll get better results with Astra if you stick to the native block editor. Of course, you won’t get the full visual design experience if you do that – there are always trade-offs.<\/p> Finally, within those two scenarios above, we\u2019ll run two tests:<\/p> This will give you an idea of what kind of performance you can expect if you implement WordPress performance best practices with a plugin like WP Rocket. In addition to caching and other general optimization features, WP Rocket introduced a new feature and an enhancement in version 3.9 that do a great job of optimizing both Divi and Astra:<\/p> For reference, our test site is hosted on the cheapest $5 per month DigitalOcean droplet, managed and powered by RunCloud and an all-Nginx stack.<\/p> Additionally, here are the exact version numbers of the themes\/plugins that we’re testing:<\/p> To run the speed tests themselves<\/a>, we\u2019ll use WebPageTest<\/a> with a mobile-first testing approach and a focus on Core Web Vitals performance metrics<\/a> such as Largest Contentful Paint:<\/p> Now, let\u2019s get to the data!<\/p> In this first test, we\u2019re testing just the themes themselves. Basically, we spun up a new WordPress install, activated the themes, and then ran the tests. <\/p> More specifically, we’re testing the main homepage, which shows the blog list by default (which is just the default “Hello World” post<\/em>).<\/p> Here’s how the themes performed by themselves (without WP Rocket<\/em>):<\/p> Overall, you can see that Astra is faster than Divi by itself. The load times and page size are both significantly lower with Astra than with Divi.<\/p> Remember – this isn’t a realistic test for a complete website (especially if you plan to pair Astra with a page builder plugin<\/em>), but it does show that Astra’s foundation is a bit lighter than Divi’s foundation.<\/p> However, if you add WP Rocket to the mix, the numbers get a lot closer:<\/p> First off, you can see that Divi and Astra now have pretty identical Largest Contentful Paint <\/a>times with WP Rocket enabled, whereas Astra’s LCP time was notably better without WP Rocket.<\/p>How We\u2019ll Test Divi vs Astra Theme Performance<\/h2>
Divi vs Astra Speed Tests<\/h2>
Scenario #1: Just the Themes<\/h3>
<\/td> LCP<\/strong><\/td> TTFB<\/strong><\/td> HTTP Requests<\/strong><\/td> File Size<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Divi<\/td> 0.953 s<\/td> 0.424 s<\/td> 15<\/td> 206 KB<\/td><\/tr> Astra<\/td> 0.558 s<\/td> 0.396 s<\/td> 7<\/td> 41 KB<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure> <\/td> LCP<\/strong><\/td> TTFB<\/strong><\/td> HTTP Requests<\/strong><\/td> File Size<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Divi + WP Rocket \ud83d\ude80<\/td> 0.424 s<\/td> 0.368 s<\/td> 9<\/td> 93<\/td><\/tr> Astra + WP Rocket \ud83d\ude80<\/td> 0.409 s<\/td> 0.353 s<\/td> 4<\/td> 19 KB<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>