7 Best Free Eleventy (11ty) Themes & Starters (2026)

Eleventy (often written as 11ty) has become the static site generator of choice for developers who want speed, simplicity, and zero client-side JavaScript bloat. Unlike heavier frameworks, Eleventy outputs pure static HTML that loads instantly and scores perfect marks on every performance metric. The fastest way to start is with a well-built starter theme — a pre-configured project with layouts, styling, and best practices already in place. Here are the seven best free Eleventy themes and starters in 2026, chosen for speed, documentation, and active maintenance.

1. eleventy-base-blog

The official starter from the Eleventy team, and the best place for beginners to start. It includes everything a blog needs: post layout, tags, pagination, an RSS feed, a sitemap, and zero client-side JavaScript. It is deliberately minimal — you get a clean, fast foundation to style however you like. Best for: beginners learning Eleventy and developers who want a blank slate with sensible defaults.

2. Hylia

Created by Andy Bell, Hylia is a beautifully designed, accessible starter with a distinctive editorial look. It includes dark mode support, a service worker for offline reading, webmention support, and a flexible design system built with CSS custom properties. The typography and layout feel premium, not like a free starter. Best for: writers who want a distinctive, accessible blog without designing from scratch.

3. Minimal

True to its name, Minimal is a stripped-down, ultra-fast starter with clean typography and almost no styling overhead. It supports posts, pages, tags, and an RSS feed, and ships with a tiny CSS file you can easily override. Perfect Core Web Vitals out of the box. Best for: developers who want maximum speed and total control over styling.

4. Squirrel

Squirrel is a modern, feature-rich starter focused on developer experience. It includes image optimization (automatic responsive images and lazy loading), markdown with footnotes and syntax highlighting, an RSS feed, sitemap, and a clean content-first design. It handles the boring technical work so you can focus on writing. Best for: bloggers who want image optimization and modern features without configuration.

5. 11ty-starter

A clean, opinionated starter that bundles together the most commonly requested features: Tailwind CSS integration (purge-enabled for tiny output), dark mode, SEO meta tags, a posts collection with pagination, tags, and a search index. It is well-documented and frequently updated. Best for: developers who want Tailwind CSS and modern tooling pre-configured.

6. Sleek

Sleek is a premium-feeling starter with a modern card-based layout, smooth typography, and excellent mobile responsiveness. It includes a built-in search (client-side, no server needed), tags, categories, and social sharing buttons. The design is polished enough to launch as-is. Best for: content sites and blogs that want a polished, modern look out of the box.

7. neat-starter

neat-starter combines Eleventy with the NEAT stack — Netlify CMS, Eleventy, Alpine.js, and Tailwind — giving you a full Jamstack setup with a visual content editor. Non-technical writers can edit content through Netlify CMS’s web interface while developers get the speed of static HTML. It includes contact forms, image optimization, and a clean default design. Best for: client projects and teams where non-technical editors need to publish content.

How to install an Eleventy starter

1. Make sure you have Node.js installed (version 14 or newer). Clone or download the starter’s GitHub repository.
2. Open a terminal in the project folder and run npm install to install dependencies.
3. Run npm start (or npx @11ty/eleventy --serve) to start a local development server with live reload — preview at http://localhost:8080.
4. Edit _data/site.json (or _config.js, depending on the starter) with your site name, URL, and social links.
5. Replace the sample posts in the posts/ or src/posts/ folder with your own Markdown files. When ready, run npm run build and deploy the output folder to Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, or any static host.

What to look for

• Zero or minimal client-side JavaScript. Eleventy’s big advantage is speed — a starter shipping heavy JS frameworks defeats the purpose. Check the demo’s PageSpeed score.
• Active maintenance. Look for commits within the last six months and an issue tracker that gets responses. Eleventy evolves, and an unmaintained starter will break on newer versions.
• Image optimization built in. Automatic responsive images and lazy loading are tedious to configure yourself — prefer starters that include them.
• Good documentation. A starter with a thorough README and clear config comments saves hours of guessing. Avoid starters where you have to reverse-engineer the setup.
• Deploy-ready. Starters with one-click deploy buttons for Netlify or Vercel get you live in minutes. Check for a netlify.toml or vercel.json in the repo.

FAQ

Do I need to know JavaScript to use Eleventy? Basic familiarity helps for configuration, but you can write content entirely in Markdown and never touch JavaScript. For custom features, Eleventy uses simple JavaScript data files — no framework knowledge required. How fast are Eleventy sites compared to WordPress? Dramatically faster. A typical Eleventy site loads in under half a second and scores 95–100 on PageSpeed Insights. WordPress sites often score 50–70 even with caching plugins, because they generate pages dynamically and load plugin JavaScript. Can I add a CMS to an Eleventy site? Yes — starters like neat-starter include Netlify CMS, and you can add Decap CMS (formerly Netlify CMS), Forestry, or Sanity to any Eleventy site. Your editors get a visual interface; your site stays static and fast. Where should I host an Eleventy site? Any static host works. Netlify and Vercel are the most popular — they build your site automatically when you push to Git, include free SSL, and have generous free tiers. GitHub Pages also works but requires you to build locally or use a GitHub Action.