Top 18 Free Ghost Themes in 2021

If you’re not drawn to the stuffy feel of WordPress, Ghost is an open-source blogging platform that is supported by Node.js. Ghost provides a clutter-free platform for all your content publishing needs.

Ghost is a favorite among software engineering and web developer communities- individuals not interested in including funky widgets to their blog design, allowing for focus to be placed on creating content.

If you already run a blogger, WordPress or Tumblr blog, you can easily migrate your current blog to Ghost. You can locate documentation for such migrations in the Ghost Developer Docs.

That said, leaving your current content platform might require that you let go of some things like widgets, and definitely your blog theme. And because of this, we’ve crafted this guide to help those who are trying to change up their website by transferring to Ghost, or for bloggers who are currently using Ghost and want to update their blog style.

We have listed an in-depth, comprehensive collection of the best free Ghost themes available. These themes differ from fully multi-purpose to minimal.

So whether you are trying to switch to Ghost or start with it, these Ghost blog themes and Ghost site themes will aid you tremendously. And regardless of your specific needs, there’s something for everyone in this piece.

The Top Ghost Themes for 2021

#1 Mindspun Themes

Mindspun’s themes offer multi-purpose functionally that allows you to easily customize your blog to have the feel and look of a website. They let you customize and manipulate how each element appears.

Mindspun gives you full design control by allowing you to control all JavaScript, CSS, and HTML on a page. You can also customize the blog’s content structure and layout, which empowers you to create something unique.

This can all be achieved via a WYSIWYG editor that gives you a clear view of how your website would look after editing. The Mindspun theme also offers built-in search engine optimization functions that boost your website’s load time. The Mindspun theme is created for enhancing your site’s page speed.

This theme takes just a few minutes to set up and doesn’t require third-party apps or plug-ins to work perfectly.

#2 Ghostium

Even though we’ve already seen a theme in this piece that’s very similar to medium.com’s design, Ghostium is fully based on the UI and UX patterns of medium and the outcome is stunning. It also offers an excellent choice of text alignment.

Ghostium is an awesome platform for both programmers and bloggers that want to share their focus or thoughts on the content aspects, while ensuring a maximum readability rate. This Ghost theme functions across all devices and all the content loads asynchronously, so there is no need to jump between pages.

To highlight code Ghostium uses prism. And for people who are active on social media platforms, you can enjoy its in-built integration for Open Graph and Twitter Cards, which means each post will look fabulous on social media.

#3 Editorial

Just like its name Editorial is a free Ghost theme that focuses on news websites. However, if you intend to dive into the blog space you can do so with editorial as it has so many features that can be helpful.

Editorial offers a creative and clean design, which gives a pleasant experience while browsing through your content. And regardless of if you like the out-of-the-box look or not, you can choose to modify it, as both options work fine.

This theme is retina-ready, cross-browser compatible, 100% mobile-friendly. You don’t have to bother about an excellent performance and all the technicalities involved. Editorial handles all that for you. A stand out feature for this theme is the sticky bar menu that puts all navigating functions before the user continuously.

#4 Crisp

This is a lightweight Ghost theme that works great for authors and individuals who intend to build portfolio-like websites that focus just on content. Crisp features a left-hand sidebar that can be used to display a social media widget and outline your website’s vision or mission as well as menu links to display important pages.

Crisp is awesome for sharing insightful programming posts that require just a white background. Plus, its social sharing works with Ridiculously Responsive Social Sharing (RRSS) buttons and Crisp offers native Disqus implementation.

#5 Saga

Saga has gotten a lot of support from individuals who live and breathe photography as it makes it seamless to create templates that can be utilized in this  visual content in easy to view formats like grid layout.

Saga is one of such themes that focuses entirely on photographic content. Saga transforms your main page to have a Pinterest-like layout for showcasing your most recent posts, while content pages display a big-size featured image and have a minimalistic layout that describes your recent works.

However, if you wish to include things like social media buttons or an author bio, you may need to make some changes to the theme but that’s pretty easy to do.

#6 Attila

The Attila Ghost theme is a minimalistic one that looks so much like medium.com in terms of design. This Ghost theme is a great fit for content writers, programmers, and bloggers who just require a basic platform to share their thoughts.

It has a parallax feature that lets you choose a visual cover for every post to give it additional flavor. And after each post using this theme you can display the author’s information as well as showcase the social media share buttons and you can even enable the comments option.

Attila also utilizes jQuery plugins to show the progress of content that readers engage with at the top of the page. As a coder, you can also enjoy syntax highlighting with this theme for your code, which means you just have to paste your code and that’s it.

#7 Dawn

If you’re looking to start a very unique blog Dawn might work out for you. This free Ghost theme adheres to all the latest regulations and trends on the web. Simply put it does amazingly well across all web browsers and devices. All readers will enjoy skimming through your content with this theme.

Some of the major features include a pop-up search and subscription bars and a lot more buttons. Dawn also offers some great styling features that allow you to create an outcome that aligns with your design choice. That said, Dawn has a minimal default view that caters to a variety of tastes.

#8 GhostScroll

While Ghost does well for blogging, it’s not only for that. Ghost can be used in so many ways, and one of such is creating one-page websites that can be used for self-promotion, gateway pages for products, or business promotion.

GhostScroll is the perfect example and culmination of what it means to create a single-page website using Ghost. Unlike Drupal, WordPress and others, Ghost provides a basic admin dashboard that allows seamless editing of content and layout. This makes GhostScroll an awesome pick for people who like simplicity when setting up a production-ready site. To get a hang of GhostScroll they offer a demo page that allows you to see what their Ghost themes can do.

#9 Wave

If you are a podcaster or blogger you would want to have a look at Wave. It is a free Ghost theme that will help you to get started with your blog quickly and easily. Rather than starting from scratch, Wave allows you to create a professional website, as this theme has so many features that let you kickstart start your project effortlessly.

Because of a simple and clean appearance, everything you intend to publish will come out looking stunning. While you can choose to enhance waves default settings a lot of people choose to use its current configurations as the results are quite inspiring.

#10 Vapor

Ghost represents a minimalist approach to blogging because of that we will be listing quite a few of such many more teams and in this list. Vapor offers a minimal layout that focuses on the typographical appearance rather than the positioning of other factors.

You can include cover visuals and adjust Google fonts to improve the font appearance and add a modern feel.

After each post vapor allows you to display the author info and social media share buttons, as well as implement the Disqus comments for reader engagement

#11 Ghostwriter

This Ghost theme focuses on typography to offer a seamless content experience. Ghostwriter theme is built with AJAX principles, which provide a slick experience in between browsing other website pages and posts. Ghostwriter also features great styling through SASS and all the needed files are provided. The theme looks and works great on mobile devices as well as features content support.

Another major thing with GhostWriter is that you can choose a feature post (that is promote a single post on your homepage) and then direct users using the menu to the contact archive of your website. This allows you to promote your most recent content on your homepage.

This theme is a great fit for startups that use their blogs only for product announcements.

#12 WebKid

Just taking a first glance at what WebKid offers, it looks like it was created on top of WordPress. It has a widget sidebar, box layout, and every other thing that you would usually see in WordPress themes. However, WebKid is a unique Ghost theme that is pretty amazing.

WebKid’s major focus is providing a theme for bloggers who aim to write tutorials, sharing news, or report news consistently. You can optimize and modify sidebar widgets using any widget of your choice, whether dynamic or social related.

#13 Massively

Massively is a very creative looking theme and the perfect solution to free Ghost themes for all journalists and bloggers out there. If you’ve been searching for how to create an online hub for your articles Massively can help achieve amazing results.

The entire design of this Ghost theme is focused on a full screen visual that helps to level up the entirety of your blog.

You can also fine-tune and style Massively’s default look and customize it to the minutest of details.

Some other features Massively provides users are scrolling and parallax effect, an array of predefined elements, a scroll down button, and social media icons. Irrespective of your passion, using Massively, you should be able to create a blog that attracts visitors.

#14 Detox

If you’re a travel or food blogger, Detox might be one of the best options for you. Detox offers a minimal yet full page content approach and makes it seamless for Ghost bloggers to capture the attention of readers with their stories based on its design layout alone.

Its custom styling, big images, comments, and small fonts option will have you coming back for more.

#15 London

London is a contemporary, eye-catching and striking Ghost theme that focuses on written and visual content majorly. Rather than running a new site or blog that sticks to the traditional look, you can effortlessly take control of your blog’s look with London. Its impressive web design options will help boost your creativity as well.

However, at first glance, you may think that London is a team that helps to create a designer’s portfolio but that’s not the case. So if you want to add some spice to your visual content London will be helpful. This is coupled with its compelling text feature that helps to create a winning combination. London also offers a wide array of elements and component collections, social media buttons, and an about page.

#16 No Nonsense

Themes stuffed with widgets and plugins that overload the system are normal for most blogging platforms. Because of this, the No Nonsense Ghost theme was created. Although this theme is minimal, it packs a heavy punch with valuable features.

Using the No Nonsense theme, you can easily set up a multi-author blog that permits tagging content tags, posting cover photos, and also custom error pages for websites that run a lot of content simultaneously.

The No Nonsense theme also allows you to embed responsive video content via the Fitvid library. It uses prism for syntax highlights and offers valuable social media sharing buttons. To top it off, this theme includes integrated Google Analytics and Disqus comments.

It’s simple to use and a perfect fit for blogging websites that intend to churn out a lot of content.

#17 The Shell

Just as its name, The Shell is great for hacking lovers.  It offers a straight-forward view, it’s dark, and uses technical fonts. The shell is built with pure CSS, which means you can easily adjust the CSS at any point to reflect what you want. This theme also supports Disqus comments, code highlighting, and Google Analytics. It’s a developer’s heaven.

#18 Gunter

The Gunter theme is a flamboyant one. It offers powerful typography and functions to include a cover photo for each post. And its a great choice for bloggers and coders who intend to share their latest blogs in ways that trigger focus on their content. And thanks to the highlights library Gunter offers code highlights.

Our Choice

For us, Mindspun provides the best free Ghost themes. We offer more than the other free themes, allowing you to turn your blog into an amazing website full of multiple features. Plus, the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” functionality makes the entire process seamless.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap! You’ve seen the 18 best Ghost themes in 2021, including the best of them all: Mindspun.