Divi vs Astra
Divi or Astra? We built the same site in both.
Short answer: pick Astra if you want the most widely used lightweight theme and you will spend the first stretch of the build turning its defaults off, and pick Divi if you would rather not have to.
{ The short answer }
Divi or Astra: which one is better?
Astra reproduced the design exactly, across more than 76 million pixels, with a maximum channel difference of zero. Divi reproduced it exactly too, and scored a perfect 100. Astra's payload measurement is unlike any other in this project, and it is the reason to read on.
0
Performance points its payload costs
Astra's entire frontend payload is two requests and about 15 KB, and removing it changed the performance score by nothing measurable. On speed it is genuinely free.
13.8%
How far the mobile layout breaks
What Astra costs is accuracy, not speed. Leave its stylesheet in place on a bespoke design and the mobile layout diverges by 13.83 per cent and gains 40 pixels of page height. For every other platform we measured, trimming bought speed. Here it bought correctness.
Both builds reproduce the same design from the same stylesheet. Read the full write-up, or see the detailed Astra comparison.
{ What each costs }
What do Astra and Divi cost in 2026?
Astra is free, and the free theme is what this build used. Astra Pro on its own is $69 a year for up to three sites, or $249 once at the current introductory price against a $349 regular price. Divi is $89 a year, or $249 once for unlimited websites.
Those two $249 figures are worth sitting with. Astra's covers three sites. Divi's covers every site you will ever build. Astra free was never the constraint here: the work went into removing Astra's defaults, and no paid module shortens that.
Prices checked on each vendor's own pricing page on 13 September 2026: Divi and Astra.
{ Who should pick which }
Who should pick Astra, and who should pick Divi?
Pick Astra if you want the most installed lightweight theme and a very large template ecosystem, and you accept spending the first part of a bespoke build evicting defaults. One it ships switched on lost its positioning once the theme CSS came out and added exactly sixteen pixels of invisible white-on-white arrow to every page.
Pick Divi if you want the builder and the theme to be one product, and a client who can change layout rather than only words.
And if you would rather we just built it for you: we will work in whichever of these you want. We have shipped sites on Astra and we will do it again if that is what suits your team. We are not going to talk you out of a tool you already like.
Our preference is Divi, and this page is roughly why. Not because it wins on weight, because it does not, but because its problems are visible and fixable and its builder is one a client can actually learn. When something goes wrong in Divi you can see it. That matters more over five years than any single score.
Comparing a different pair? We built the same page against Elementor, GeneratePress, Kadence and the WordPress block editor too, and the full write-up with every measurement in one place is in the main article. If you want to see how we work in Divi day to day, that is on the Divi developer page.
New sites start at $2,400, and you get a fixed price to approve before anything starts, so there is no hourly meter running while we work it out. You can scope out your entire project on the pricing page, or tell us what you are building and we will price it for you.
{ Keep it growing: monthly care & retainers } · month-to-month, cancel anytime
Care
$300 / month
Keep your site updated, secure, and online.
- Core, plugin & theme updates
- Daily backups
- Security & uptime monitoring
- Small fixes
- Priority support
Best value
Grow
$650 / month
Maintenance plus steady monthly momentum.
- Everything in Care
- Monthly content & page updates
- Performance & SEO monitoring
- A dedicated dev block
- Monthly check-in
Dedicated
From $5,000 / month
A true extension of your team.
- Everything in Grow
- Larger dev allocation
- Roadmap & strategy planning
- Priority availability
- Quarterly reviews
Prefer to itemize? Build your own estimate on the pricing page.
{ FAQ }
Divi vs Astra questions, answered.
Should I build my site on Divi or Astra?
Both reproduced this design exactly, so fidelity does not decide it. Astra costs nothing measurable in speed. What it costs is accuracy: leave its stylesheet in place on a bespoke design and the mobile layout breaks by 13.83 per cent and gains 40 pixels of page height, so the first stretch of the build is spent evicting its defaults. Divi held a perfect 100 with none of that to undo. Pick Astra if you want the same result as GeneratePress and will budget that eviction time.
What does a custom WordPress site cost to build?
Builds start at $2,400. Most sites land between $2,400 and $6,500 depending on how many unique page layouts you need and how much has to integrate with something else. The pricing page has the full breakdown and a calculator you can run yourself, so you can get to a number without talking to anyone first.
Do I have to build on the platform you recommend?
No. We build on whichever platform you want. We prefer Divi, for the reason above: it is the one place you can hand someone a drag-and-drop editor they already understand and still own every line of the theme underneath it. If you would rather stay on Astra, that is a normal request and it changes nothing about how the work is done.
Can you move my existing Astra site to Divi?
Yes, but it is a rebuild rather than an import. The platforms store pages in completely different formats, so nothing converts automatically. Your design, content and URLs carry over. The page structure gets built again. Worth knowing before anyone quotes a migration like it is a small job.
Will I own the site and the code?
Yes. When the build is handed over it is yours, theme files included. There is nothing locked to us and nothing you have to keep paying us to keep the site running.
Can you build from a design I already have?
Yes, and it is the exact thing this project tested. We took one finished design and rebuilt it into six platforms without changing a pixel, and all six reproduced it. If you arrive with a design from Figma or from another designer, the platform is not going to be the constraint.
Have a project in mind?
Tell us what you're building. You'll get a fixed price to approve before anything starts.