Divi vs GeneratePress
Divi or GeneratePress? We built the same site in both.
Short answer: pick GeneratePress if you are porting a design you already own and want the theme to disappear, and pick Divi if the people maintaining the site need to change layout rather than just words.
{ The short answer }
Divi or GeneratePress: which one is better?
These are usually pitched as opposites, and the result is not what the arguments online suggest. GeneratePress reproduced the design exactly, byte for byte, and costs almost nothing to run. Divi reproduced it exactly too, and scored a perfect 100. The real difference is not fidelity or speed. It is what you can do once the site is built.
7 KB
What GeneratePress costs you
Its entire frontend payload. We scored the page with it in place and with it removed, and the difference was inside the noise floor. It is the lightest theme we measured.
0
Layout controls for your client
GeneratePress with the block editor is, in its own description, a content editor for a fixed design and not a page builder. Your client can retype a heading. They cannot move anything.
Both builds reproduce the same design from the same stylesheet. Read the full write-up, or see the detailed GeneratePress comparison.
{ What each costs }
What do GeneratePress and Divi cost in 2026?
GeneratePress is free, and the free theme is what this build used. GP Premium is $59 a year and one licence covers up to 500 sites, which is the most generous site allowance per dollar in this comparison. There is no lifetime option. Divi is $89 a year, or $249 once, both covering unlimited websites.
Running GeneratePress free cost about ten lines of PHP, because Premium's modules are graphical interfaces for design decisions a bespoke stylesheet has already made.
Prices checked on each vendor's own pricing page on 13 September 2026: Divi and GeneratePress.
{ Who should pick which }
Who should pick GeneratePress, and who should pick Divi?
Pick GeneratePress if you are porting a finished design and want the least to remove. Swapping the theme underneath took about twenty lines, and stripping its own header and footer was two documented hook calls.
Pick Divi if your client needs to change layout, not just content, and you want one product for the build and the handover. Divi also modelled repeated content properly from the start, where the GeneratePress build began with 145 separate fields where a query belonged.
Lock the Theme Builder down before handover either way.
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 GeneratePress 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, Kadence, Astra 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 GeneratePress questions, answered.
Should I build my site on Divi or GeneratePress?
Both reproduced this design exactly, so fidelity does not decide it. GeneratePress gives you the least to remove of anything we measured, about 7 KB, and swapping it out later is a couple of dozen lines. What it does not give you is a builder your client can open. Divi does, and it still hit a perfect 100. Pick GeneratePress if you are porting a design you already own and want the theme out of the way.
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 GeneratePress, that is a normal request and it changes nothing about how the work is done.
Can you move my existing GeneratePress 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.