If you’ve been researching WordPress themes, you’ve probably come across both Divi and Astra.
Divi is a complete platform that packs a theme, page builder, templates, and AI into one bundle. Astra is a lightweight theme built for speed. It works with any page builder you prefer, including Divi itself.
In this article, we’ll do a Divi vs Astra comparison across core features to determine which one you should use.
Here’s a quick look at how Divi and Astra compare across key features.
| Feature | Divi | Astra |
| Type | Theme + Builder | Theme |
| Visual Builder | ✅ | ❌ |
| AI Tools | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in Marketing Tools | ✅ | ❌ |
| Lifetime License | ✅ | ❌ |
| Template Library | ✅ | ✅ |
| Theme Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| WooCommerce Builder | ✅ | ⚠️ |
| Performance | ⚠️ | ✅ |
Before we compare these tools side by side, let’s look at how each one approaches building WordPress sites.
Divi is both a WordPress theme and a page builder, serving over 1 million websites.
You get access to a theme, a visual drag-and-drop builder, over 350 templates, and marketing plugins like Bloom for email opt-ins and Monarch for social sharing. Divi also has AI features that handle content and image generation directly within the builder.
The Theme Builder extends the visual editor to headers, footers, product pages, and other global elements. You can save custom layouts to the Divi Library and reuse them across your site.
A major update is coming with Divi 5.0. The builder is shifting away from shortcodes toward a JSON-based format, which should improve compatibility with how WordPress works today.
Astra takes the opposite approach. It’s a lightweight WordPress theme with over 1 million active installations. It is designed to be fast and minimal rather than feature-packed.
Rather than bundling a builder, Astra works alongside your preferred tool. It integrates smoothly with Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Breakdance, and other popular builders. You pick the design tool that fits your workflow, and Astra handles your site’s foundation.
The theme uses the WordPress Customizer for settings. You can adjust the headers, footers, colors, and typography all through the familiar WordPress controls. The Astra ecosystem extends through companion plugins. Spectra adds visual building blocks to Gutenberg while ZipWP handles AI-powered website generation. Both come from the same team as Astra and work together seamlessly.
How quickly you can build something depends on how the tool is structured. Here’s how Divi and Astra compare in practice.
Divi uses a visual front-end builder with a floating interface. The canvas takes up your entire screen with settings appearing as popups that float over your design. This maximizes workspace but can feel cluttered when managing multiple settings.
When you click on any element, a settings panel opens with three tabs. The Content tab handles text, links, and media. The Design tab controls typography, colors, spacing, and animations. The Advanced tab covers custom CSS, z-index, and visibility conditions. This structure keeps things organized but adds layers to navigate.
The click-to-type inline editing works smoothly. You click directly on text to edit it without opening settings. For a complex page, you can use the Layers Mode to help you navigate complex layouts.
Divi has more options than most builders. The learning curve is steeper because there’s more to learn. Beginners often spend weeks before the workflow clicks. The upcoming Divi 5 update introduces a fixed sidebar to make things feel more familiar.
Astra doesn’t have its own builder. Instead, it works with third-party builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, Breakdance, and Gutenberg. Your experience depends on which builder you choose.
From the theme perspective, all its settings live in the WordPress Customizer. This interface is clean and straightforward. If you’ve used WordPress before, you’ll feel at home immediately.
Astra’s strength is that it doesn’t add complexity. The Customizer has fewer options than Divi’s builder, which can feel refreshing if you prefer simplicity.
For complete beginners with no WordPress experience, Astra requires learning a separate builder. But for WordPress users, Astra feels like a natural extension rather than a new system to master.
Astra wins here for WordPress users. The native Customizer interface feels familiar and straightforward. Divi is more powerful but requires more time to learn, especially for beginners.
What you can actually build with each tool comes down to the customization options available. Here’s how they stack up.
Divi gives you complete design control without touching code. Every module on your page can be styled through the visual editor.
Global Colors and Fonts let you define your brand palette and typography. You set these up separately in Divi’s settings, then apply them to elements throughout your site.
Divi Presets take this further by letting you save specific style combinations like button designs or heading styles. This is a time saver as you can update a preset, and the changes are updated in every instance across your site.
The Theme Builder handles headers, footers, product pages, and other global elements. You design them visually using the same drag-and-drop interface. Divi also integrates with Custom Field plugins and lets you add dynamic content tags to pull information from your database into your designs automatically.
For advanced customization, you get hover states, scroll animations, custom background masks, and blend modes. Divi also lets you add custom CSS directly within the builder for further fine-tuning. The upcoming Divi 5 is set to introduce CSS Grid support alongside Flexbox, giving you more layout options.
Astra works through the WordPress Customizer for theme settings and pairs with a page builder for page-level design.
The Customizer handles global settings like colors, typography, container widths, and button styles. You see changes in real time before publishing. Astra Pro adds Typography Presets, more Google Font options, and granular spacing controls for individual page elements.
Astra includes a Style Guide that acts as a visual control center for your site’s appearance. It pulls together your current color palette, typography choices, and button styles into one preview screen. You can see how everything works together before applying changes, which makes it easier to catch misaligned colors or mismatched fonts early.
The Header and Footer Builder uses a visual three-row system. You place elements like logos, menus, and buttons into the Top, Primary, and Bottom rows. Astra Pro unlocks mega menus, sticky headers, transparent headers, and off-canvas menus.
Astra also comes with Hooked Elements, which lets you inject content into specific theme locations without code. You can further customize this by setting various display conditions to target content to specific pages, post types, or user roles.
Divi wins for design control. The visual builder with global styles, presets, and animations gives you more flexibility out of the box. Astra offers solid customization through the Customizer and page builders but requires more setup for comparable results.
Speed is often the first tradeoff people notice when choosing a theme or builder. Let’s look at what each one delivers.
Divi has historically been criticized for code bloat due to its use of shortcodes. This makes it slower, especially on complex pages with many modules.
To help you optimize the performance, it comes with Critical CSS that prioritizes above-the-fold content to improve First Contentful Paint times. It also has a JavaScript option that loads on demand instead of all at once. It also strips unused styles before rendering.
A test with Divi on a basic page showed a page size of 445 KB with 18 HTTP requests loading in 1.4 seconds. Desktop PageSpeed scores reached 92, with mobile scores around 84.
Complex pages with many modules still require more resources. The upcoming Divi 5 aims to close this gap with a ground-up rebuild, but it’s not yet available as a stable release.
Astra is built around speed as a core principle. The theme maintains a footprint under 50 KB by conditionally loading only the code for features you actually use.
The theme avoids jQuery entirely, using Vanilla JavaScript instead. This reduces render-blocking and keeps the main thread free for user interactions.
A test with Astra on a basic page showed a page size of 87 KB with 10 HTTP requests loading in 570ms. LCP times typically stay between 412ms and 583ms. CLS consistently hits 0, meaning content doesn’t shift while loading.
Astra wins here. Its lighter codebase results in smaller page sizes and fewer HTTP requests. Divi requires more optimization to achieve comparable speeds, especially on pages with many modules.
Both themes offer extensive template libraries to speed up your workflow. Here’s how they compare.
Divi offers over 350 pre-designed templates organized into Layout Packs. Each pack includes coordinated pages for an entire website, such as Home, About, and Contact pages.
When you start a new page, Divi prompts you to choose from a layout pack, start from scratch, or reuse a saved layout. This keeps beginners oriented and makes it easy to achieve a cohesive look.
Templates cover a wide range of industries, including business, eCommerce, portfolios, restaurants, and blogs. Every element within a template can be customized using the visual builder.
You can save your own layouts to the Divi Library for reuse across sites. Exporting and importing layouts as JSON files makes it easy to transfer designs between projects.
Astra provides over 250 starter templates designed to work seamlessly with popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Gutenberg.
The templates focus on simplicity and speed. They’re lightweight by design, ensuring fast load times even after import.
The Starter Templates plugin integrates directly into the WordPress admin. You can browse by category, preview designs with your existing colors and typography, and import with one click.
Templates cover industries like business, e-commerce, blogs, portfolios, restaurants, and SaaS. The most polished premium designs require an Astra Pro license.
Divi wins here. The larger template library with coordinated Layout Packs makes it easier to achieve a cohesive look. Astra offers solid templates but fewer options overall.
Running a store means thinking about products, checkout, and conversions. Here’s how Divi and Astra handle WooCommerce.
Divi includes 25 WooCommerce-specific modules that integrate with the visual builder. You get Add to Cart, Product Rating, Product Images, Cart Totals, and more.
The Theme Builder lets you customize every part of your store. You can design custom product pages, shop archives, cart layouts, and checkout flows using the same drag-and-drop interface.
You can also use dynamic content tags to pull product information directly into your designs. You can display prices, descriptions, images, and related products without touching code.
Divi Leads allows you to A/B test different product layouts, pricing displays, or checkout flows to see which converts better.
Astra provides WooCommerce support through its theme settings and page builder integration.
The free version includes basic styling for shop pages and product layouts. Astra Pro adds advanced controls, including distraction-free checkout, sticky add-to-cart, and dropdown mini-carts.
The theme integrates seamlessly with page builders for deeper customization. You can design product pages and archives using Elementor, Divi, or any builder you prefer.
The Astra ecosystem includes additional tools for WooCommerce stores. Spectra offers Loop Builder for custom product grids. Third-party plugins like CartFlow provide specialized WooCommerce widgets.
Divi wins here. Its dedicated WooCommerce modules and Theme Builder give you more control over your store without needing additional plugins. Astra handles WooCommerce well but relies more on page builders and addons for comparable features.
No tool does everything on its own. The extensions and integrations around your main choice determine what’s actually possible. Here’s how Divi and Astra compare.
Divi works as a closed ecosystem. Most functionality comes built in, which means fewer dependencies on external plugins.
Bloom handles email opt-ins and lead generation. Monarch manages social sharing. Both come included with your Elegant Themes membership at no extra cost.
Divi Cloud functions like Dropbox for your layouts. You save designs to the cloud and access them across any Divi installation. This is useful for agencies managing multiple client sites.
Divi also has AI integration that lets you generate text, images, and code directly within the builder. It learns from your site’s content to maintain brand voice. The subscription model is unlimited, meaning no credit caps.
Third-party integrations exist but are less critical since Divi bundles so much functionality. The ecosystem focuses on keeping everything in-house.
Astra is designed to work with the broader WordPress ecosystem rather than replace it.
The theme integrates seamlessly with popular page builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, Breakdance, and Divi itself. You choose which builder fits your workflow.
The Astra ecosystem includes Spectra for visual building blocks, ZipWP for AI website generation, and OttoKit for workflow automation. These tools come from the same company and share the same development standards.
Third-party plugins work well because Astra doesn’t override WordPress defaults. SEO plugins, form builders, membership tools, and learning management systems integrate without conflicts.
This is a close call. Divi bundles more tools including email and social plugins, reducing the need for external solutions. Astra works better with third-party plugins and gives you more flexibility to mix and match tools.
Both tools offer different pricing structures to match different user needs.
Divi offers a lifetime payment option that sets it apart from most WordPress tools.
| Plan | Price | Sites |
| Yearly | $89/year | Unlimited |
| Lifetime | $249 | Unlimited |
| Pro Yearly | $277/year | Unlimited |
| Pro Lifetime | $297 + $212/year | Unlimited |
The yearly plan includes the Divi Theme, Divi Builder, Extra Magazine Theme, Bloom, and Monarch. The lifetime plan removes the annual renewal requirement. Pro plans add Divi AI, Divi Cloud, and priority support.
Astra offers tiered pricing that scales for agencies and larger projects.
| Plan | Price | Sites |
| Free | $0 | Unlimited |
| Pro | $69/year | 3 |
| Essential Toolkit | $119/year | 3 |
| Business Toolkit | $159/year | 3 |
| Lifetime Astra Pro | $319 | 3 |
| Lifetime Bundles | ~$599-$699 | 3 |
The Pro plan adds advanced customization features. The Essential Toolkit bundles Astra Pro with Spectra Pro and premium starter templates. The Business Toolkit adds ZipWP, OttoKit, and other workflow tools.
Divi wins here. The lifetime plan at $249 offers exceptional long-term value for agencies managing multiple sites. Astra’s entry-level pricing is competitive, but Divi’s unlimited site license and bundled plugins offer more for the price.
Both tools approach WordPress differently.
Divi gives you everything in one package. The theme, the builder, the marketing tools, the templates. If you want everything to work together without piecing together separate tools, Divi delivers. The only tradeoff is that you’re building within Divi’s ecosystem. Layouts are stored in Divi’s format, and moving away later takes effort.
Astra gives you the opposite. A fast, lightweight foundation that works with your choice of builder. You pick the plugins that fit your workflow instead of accepting whatever comes bundled. The tradeoff is that you’re responsible for putting together your own stack.
Choose Divi if you want everything in one place and don’t mind the ecosystem lock-in.
Choose Astra if you want a lean foundation and prefer building your own stack around it.
Does Astra work with Divi?
Technically, yes, but it doesn’t make much sense. Astra is a theme, and Divi is both a theme and a page builder. You could install them together, but you’d be running Divi’s theme system while Astra sits mostly unused. If you’re using Divi, you’re already getting theme functionality from Divi itself. Astra makes more sense paired with page builders like Elementor, Spectra, or Gutenberg.
What is the difference between the Astra theme and the Divi theme?
Astra is a lightweight theme that focuses on speed and works alongside your preferred builder. Divi is both a theme and a complete page-building system. Astra stays lean and lets you choose your own tools. Divi bundles everything together, including the builder, templates, and marketing plugins.
Which theme builder is best for WordPress?
Here are our picks for the best WordPress theme builders:
