Twenty Thirteen is one of WordPress's annual default themes, built the year the platform leaned into post formats and full-bleed header images. It's long-established — tracked here since 2018 — and our analysis of live sites shows it still holds a spot among the fifty most used themes we track, quietly, with no marketing behind it.
A relic from before page builders existed
The WordPress team built Twenty Thirteen as that year's default theme, bundled into core rather than sold separately. The author's own line calls it a return "to the blog," with "a full range of post formats, each displayed beautifully in their own unique way" — a fair summary of what it does. There's no premium tier, no upsell, and unlike most long-running themes it never grew a real ecosystem of child themes. What you install is what you get, unchanged since release.
Widgets and the Customizer, nothing else
There's no drag-and-drop builder, no page-building plugin baked in. Layout runs through the Customizer and widget areas, the way themes worked before Gutenberg and Elementor took over. Post formats — aside, gallery, quote, video — are the one real structural idea, each rendered with its own template so a photo blog and a link blog don't look identical. Clever for 2013. It also means anyone wanting flexible page layouts today is fighting the theme, not using it.
Where it actually turns up
Studying the sites still running it, a clear pattern shows: nonprofit and services outnumber every other business type, with personal sites close behind and e-commerce a distant afterthought. By subject it clusters on religion and community groups, personal blogs, schools, photography portfolios, and small publishers — the profile of a site set up once, by someone with no developer on retainer, and left alone. English dominates, but German, French, Japanese and Dutch installs all show up in real numbers, consistent with a theme that was translation-ready from day one.
What still works in its favor
Stability is the whole pitch. It doesn't get abandoned mid-update, doesn't depend on a builder plugin that might vanish, and doesn't carry the front-end weight heavier themes accumulate. The plugins seen running alongside it back this up: Contact Form 7 and Jetpack turn up constantly, Yoast SEO close behind — all lightweight, all doing one job. That's an owner adding exactly what's missing, not fighting theme bloat. For a small organization that needs a contact form, an SEO plugin, and nothing fancier, it still does the job it was built for.
Where it falls short, and what to use instead
The honest problems: it looks like 2013, because it is. There's no visual builder, limited layout flexibility, and no real options panel — customizing it means editing CSS. WooCommerce shows up on only a small slice of these sites, a sign it was never meant for stores. If you want core-level reliability with a current design, Twenty Twenty-Four is the same author's later, block-based answer. For an actual builder, Hestia is lighter, while Total and Uncode suit heavier page-building needs.
Before you install it
Is Twenty Thirteen still free to use?
Yes. It ships inside WordPress core, so any install can activate it free, same as always.
Does it work with a page builder like Elementor?
You can layer Elementor on top, but the theme has no builder of its own — it predates that model, so builder plugins override it rather than extend it.
Is it still a good pick for a new blog?
For a personal, community, or academic blog needing post formats and nothing flashier, yes. For anything commercial or design-heavy, a newer theme fits better.
Who should still pick it
Pick Twenty Thirteen for a small nonprofit, community group, or personal blog that values a theme that never breaks with an update. It rewards patience with stability, not features. Skip it if you need e-commerce, a visual builder, or a design that doesn't look like 2013. The alternatives above, or the WordPress team's later default themes, are the better start.
Last updated 2026-08-13
