Last Updated on November 19, 2022
Astra and GeneratePress are both amazing popular WordPress themes in 2022 that have the same selling point.
They’re both marketed on being lightweight, fast and best to use with Page builders like Elementor, Divi and Thrive Themes, there’s very little that separates them, and there’s nothing really wrong with either. You’re picking between 2 themes that are both in the top 0.1% of WordPress themes out there.
But in this article I compare Astra vs GeneratePress, I’ll share why I prefer Astra over GeneratePress and let you come to your own conclusions to fit your needs!
Table of Contents
Astra vs GeneratePress
Before we dive into the differences and compare Astra vs GeneratePress, let’s dive a little into each WordPress Theme.
Astra is a lightweight WordPress Theme that was released in 2017 by Brainstorm Force, the company that for the past 9 years have been making great WordPress products like
- Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
- Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder
- Ultimate Addons for Elementor
- Convert Pro
- Schema Pro
- WP Portfolio
In just 2 years, Astra has more than 600,000 product downloads and is loved by many and has over 3300 5-star reviews in just 2 years. That’s bloody insane!
To put it into comparison, GeneratePress has only 821 5-star reviews as I type this.
GeneratePress one the other hand is one of the world’s leading WordPress themes that lets you build a beautiful custom website using the simple drag-and-drop feature.
According to WordPress.org, GeneratePress is active on over 100K sites and has also managed to maintain an incredible 5-star rating on over 700 reviews!
GeneratePress’s Founder Tom is one of the most down to earth and helpful guy who’s contributed a lot to the WordPress community. In fact, if you go to GeneratePress documentation you will see the amount of work he has put in to create a repository of helpful documentation that is enough to make you well acclimatized with GeneratePress.
Nows let’s compare Astra vs GeneratePress!
Astra vs GeneratePress: User Interface
Astra and GeneratePress are both themes at the top of the industry when it comes to ease of use and the user interface.
GeneratePress simply uses the WordPress Customizer for its customizations. This is really convenient because you’ll be able to see the changes you make in real-time! This is the same that bloated visual pages builders use and is termed as WYSIWYG or What you see are what you get.
The free version of GeneratePress also gives you decent options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your site in no time.
For example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure detailed settings for your:
- Header – Let’s you can move your header around and change its styling
- Navigation – GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menu options and more
- Sidebar layout – Whether you want to use one or two sidebars or none.
- Blog post layout – Deals with featured image size, metadata, etc.
- Footer layout – like how many widgets to be included, etc
The Astra Pro Theme comes with a great modular editing approach that allows you to edit everything.
Both themes allow you to easily modify every aspect of your site without having to touch a single time of code ever
Astra vs GeneratePress: Speed & Performance
The one thing that makes both GeneratePress and Astra stand out from every single WordPress theme out there is one speed and performance. Both of them are fast, like fast beyond belief.
The GeneratPress theme and Astra Theme are both designed to be lightweight and fast and made for speed. There’re the most lightweight themes available in the market and offers unmatched performance. A fresh install of WordPress with Astra or GeneratePress loads in less than 0.5 seconds!
Both of them are kinda on par when it comes to speed, and considering that they’re both at the top, the difference is negligible.
Astra vs GeneratePress: Developer Friendly
Astra and GeneratePress are both designed to be used by “normies” like you and me who don’t know how to code.
Both of them are also designed with developers in mind.
The Astra Pro theme comes with abilities to add hooks and filters, which is great functionality for developers to extend the functionality of the theme without touching the base code.
GeneratePress being built by Tom who’s very active in the WordPress community keep developers in mind with features like the ability to create child themes, custom CSS section and everything else you would need.
Astra vs GeneratePress: Integration & Compatibility
Astra Pro was designed from the ground-up to be perfectly compatible with popular page builder plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, Thrive Architect and others.
GeneratePress, on the other hand, is the go-to theme for most of the online marketing professionals to use with page builders as it’s been around for a while.
Even Cyrus, the ex-head of SEO at Moz, considers GeneratePress is his go-to Theme to use with Page Builders!
My Current WordPress Stack (for the non-dev):
1. Theme = GeneratePress https://t.co/IvnQmUJisd
2. Page Builder = Elementor https://t.co/hbhCo4fP4p
3. Hosting = @wpengine (also @kinsta)
4. Cloudflare— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) June 14, 2018
However, Astra is slowly becoming more popular as it’s the new guys on the block that’s gaining traction.
I’ll check out Astra – thanks.
— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) June 15, 2018
Honestly, when it comes to using a WordPress theme with a page builder, both GeneratePress and Astra are a no brainer.
One upside Astra has over GeneratePress is that the Brainstorm Force team behind Astra have build plugin for page builders like Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder and Ultimate Addons for Elementor and you can get them included with the agency bundle of Astra.
Astra vs GeneratePress: Documentation & Updates
As mentioned in the intro Tom has contributed a lot to the WordPress community and the GeneratePress documentation is massive! Tom has created a massive repository of helpful documentation that is enough to make you well acclimatized with GeneratePress.
There’s also a ton of videos if you’re interested in a more visual approach towards learning. My point is he’s someone like you who’s dedicated his time towards contributing real value to the WordPress community.
Astra has a big Documentation repository as well but not as big and vast as GeneratePress however, it’s more than enough.
GeneratePress is kinda conservative when it comes to updates and isn’t on the cutting edge, Tom isn’t a huge fan of page builders and doesn’t change things with GeneratePress often.
Astra, on the other hand, is always trying to be on the cutting edge and releasing new updates whenever they can. They integrate well into page builders and always looking for new conversion-focused features that they can add.
Astra vs GeneratePress: Pricing
Both Astra and GeneratePress have a free version.
You can get started with the free version of Astra directly by clicking here. Also, the core GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.
However, the free version of Astra and GeneratePress are very limited in what you can do.
Here’re just a list of some of the features you can with Astra Pro that you don’t get with the free version.
- Typography (use over 800 google fonts)
- Colors & Background
- Site Layouts (change things from full width to fluid)
- Multiple Header Designs
- Flexible Footer Layouts
- WooCommerce Integration
- White Label
- Scroll to Top Link
- Spacing Control
- and so much more…
Astra Pro is available in 3 different plans: Astra Pro, Mini Agency Bundle and Agency Bundle.
Astra Pro
$59/year or $249/one-time
- All Astra Pro Features
- 20+ Free Starter Sites
- One-to-One Support
- Extensive Training
- Unlimited Website Usage
Mini Agency Bundle
$169/year or $499/one-time
- All Astra Pro Features
- 50+ Agency Starter Sites
- One-to-One Support
- Extensive Training
- Unlimited Website Usage
- +WP Portfolio Plugin
- + One of the following
Ultimate Addons for Elementor or
Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder
Agency Bundle
$249/year or $699/one-time
- All Astra Pro Features
- 50+ Agency Starter Sites
- One-to-One Support
- Extensive Training
- Unlimited Website Usage
- WP Portfolio Plugin
- Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder
- Ultimate Addons for Elementor
- Convert Pro Plugin
- Schema Pro Plugin
- All Future Plugins from Brainstorm
All Packages Include 14-Day Money Back Guarantee For New Purchases
Astra Pro Renewal Note: Renew your membership to Astra Pro for 20% Off! You will still be eligible for the discount if you renew it within two weeks after your license expires
Astra Pro may be a little pricey for some people just starting out with their online business. GeneratePress is a little cheaper alternative at only $49.
Read Next:
I vote for GeneratePress. 🙂
Just using GP themes for a while, and very satisfied for it’s performance, and also it’s good for SEO.
I was using Genesis before this, and switch to GP. Planning to try OceanWP and Astra Pro.
Thank you for the very good review
I’m not sure about the speed victory as you said. I bought both themes and I use GeneratePress for personal projects and Astra for customer projects. If you need a quick configuration, Astra seems to be suitable, but if you need simplicity and great support, GeneratePress will be more lovely.
I’m kind of in the same boat. I use GeneratePress for fun, hobby sites, while I use Astra for marketing, niche sites. Both are great and the speed difference is almost negligible especially as you can turn the different modules on and off.