25 Best WordPress Themes with Most Active Installs

25 WordPress Themes with Most Active Installs (1)

If you are a WordPress theme developer with themes available on WordPress.org, then tracking your themes on WordPress.org to check how popular your themes are, can be super-addictive.

If your theme gets featured in the first few rows of the popular themes page on WordPress.org’s popular themes section can give you a real high.

The algorithm that determines where you rank on the popularity chart though, is not just directly related to the number of active installs – it factors in the age of your theme too.

This is why even though our CyberChimps’ Responsive Theme has 40k+ active installs, it shows up below themes with much fewer installs.

A couple of years ago the theme directory used to mention the number of downloads for each theme. In November 2015, the download count was replaced with the number of active installs.

‘Active Installs’ are beyond doubt a valid and credible way to measure the popularity of a WordPress theme. Because quite often, users may download a whole bunch of themes to try them out, but may end up activating / selecting only one.

There was a lot of debate and discussion when this was rolled out, but I believe this is a very robust metric – that keeps theme developers like us on our toes – and keeps it ‘real’.

While doing some research around the most popular free themes – I made this list of the ones that have the highest number of active installs, for my own reference, but thought it might be interesting to share it with everyone.

I have excluded the 201* themes (TwentyFourteen, TwentyFifteen, etc…) from this list, because I was more curious about the themes developed by other theme developers.

Please note though that this list is NOT the same as the top most popular ones on WordPress.org’s popular themes section. I have only listed the themes with the highest number of active installs – irrespective of the theme age.

Here are a couple of interesting observations about the themes that made it to this list

  • All of these WordPress themes have over 30K active installs
  • Only 14 have over 50K active installs
  • Of these top 25 – Four themes are One Page themes (this one was a surprise to me at least)
  • Authors who have more than one theme, -Nicolas Guillame (2 themes), CryoutCreations (2 themes), ThemeGrill (2 themes)
Choose a WordPress theme that millions of users trust with CyberChimps Responsive Theme


Top 25 Themes With the Most Active Installs

So, here’s the list of the top 25 Free WordPress Themes with most active installs on WordPress:

1. SYDNEY BY ATHEMES

Business WordPress Theme. 100K+ Active Installs. Rating 5
Sydney WordPress Theme

2. CUSTOMIZR BY NICOLAS GUILLAUME

Professional WordPress Theme. 100K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
Customizr WordPress theme

3. VANTAGE BY GREG PRIDAY

Multipurpose WordPress Theme. 100K+ Active Installs.  Rating – 4.5
Vantage WordPress Theme

4. ZERIF LITE BY THEMEISLE

One Page WordPress Theme.  100K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Zerif Lite WordPress Theme

5. STOREFRONT BY WOOTHEMES

WooCommerce Theme. 100K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Storefront WordPress Theme

6. RESPONSIVE BY CYBERCHIMPS

Free Responsive WordPress Theme. 40K+ Active Installs. Rating 4.5
CyberChimps' Responsive WordPress theme

7. HUEMAN BY NICOLAS GUILLAUME

Mobile-Friendly WordPress Theme. 80K+ Active Installs.  Rating – 5
Hueman WordPress Theme

8. COLOR MAG BY THEMEGRILL

Magazine WordPress Theme.  80K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
Color Mag WordPress Theme

9. GENERATE PRESS BY TOM

Device-friendly WordPress Theme. 70K+ Active installs. Rating -5
GeneratePress WordPRess

10. VIRTUE BY KADENCE THEMES

ECommerce WordPress WordPress Theme. 70K+ Active installs. Rating -5
Virtue WordPress theme

11. SPACIOUS BY THEMEGRILL

Multipurpose WordPress Theme. 70K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
Spacious WordPress theme

12. SPARKLING BY SILKALNS

Responsive WordPress Theme. 60K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
Sparkling WordPress Theme

13. TOTAL BY HASH THEMES

Parallax Theme. 60K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5

total WordPress Theme

14. ONEPRESS BY FAME THEMES

One Page WordPress Theme. 50K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
OnePress WordPress theme

15. MH MAGAZINE LITE BY MH THEMES

Magazine WordPress Theme. 40K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
MH Magazine Lite WordPress Theme

16. GRAPHENE BY SILVERKS

Blogging WordPress Theme. 40K+ Active Installs. Rating – 5
Graphene WordPress Theme

17. HEMINGWAY BY ANDERS NOR?N

Blogging WordPress Theme. 40K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Hemingway WordPress Theme

18. ICONIC ONE BY THEMONIC

Responsive WordPress Theme. 40K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Iconic One WordPress Theme

19. ONETONE BY MAGEEWP

One Page Business WordPress Theme.  40K+ Active Installs. Rating – 3.5
One Tone WordPress Theme

20. E-SHOP BY THEMES4WP

WooCommerce WordPress theme.  30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 3.5
E-Shop WordPress Theme

21. TEMPERA BY CRYOUTCREATIONS

Responsive WordPress Theme. 30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Tempera WordPress Theme

22. SHOP ISLE BY CODEINWP

One Page Business WordPress Theme. 30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Shop Isle WordPress Theme

23. POSEIDON BY THEMEZEE

Magazine WordPress Theme. 30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Poseidon WordPress Theme

24. MANTRA BY CRYOUTCREATIONS

Blogging/ Magazine WordPress Theme. 30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Mantra WordPress Theme

25. ENIGMA BY WEBLIZAR

Multipurpose WordPress Theme. 30K+ Active Installs. Rating – 4.5
Enigma WordPress Theme

So that’s the hallowed list of themes – did I miss any themes? Any interesting observations that you have to share? Do let me know

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase using any of these links, we will earn a commission without any extra cost to you. Thanks for your support.

3 Comments on “25 Best WordPress Themes with Most Active Installs

  1. What a great list! It is probably the best list over free wordpress themes I have seen as it is not made with the purpose of pushing a certain theme or developer.
    It is added to my bookmarks!
    Thanks for sharing.

  2. Susmita, that what I say to my customers:
    My policy is: I am honest to my customers! if you follow my professional 2 suggestions “How to select a WP theme” you save tons of money.
    1. You can select any theme with more than 100k installs. If you select few thousand installs I need to spent time to fix errors and troubleshoot it on different browsers and my time is not free.
    2. A Theme must have the “Bootstrap” Otherwise you should pay double to develop additional mobile app for iOS and android.

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