Why We Build on Astro, Not WordPress: A 2026 Comparison
What that gap means for a business website, where WordPress is still the better tool, and how we build instead.
By Julia Profit Studio Published 8 min read
In April 2026, 67% of Astro sites passed Google’s Core Web Vitals, against about 49% of WordPress sites. Those figures come from HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals Technology Report, as reported by Search Engine Journal [1]. They describe thousands of real sites, not one lab test.
We write every site by hand and we build on Astro. This page explains why, with numbers you can check. If you already run a WordPress site, the last two sections show how to measure it and what moving it involves.
What the numbers say about speed
Core Web Vitals are three measurements Google uses to judge how a page feels: how fast the main content appears, how much the layout jumps, and how quickly the page reacts to a tap. A site “passes” when it is good on all three for real visitors.
The 67% and 49% above compare two populations of sites. They do not prove that Astro alone causes the difference, because the sites behind each figure were built by different people with different budgets. What they do show is that fast is the normal result on one platform and a project of its own on the other.
Our own measurement is narrower and easier to check. The demo site we built for Sunridge Pressure Washing, an invented company, scores 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile and on desktop, and A+ on securityheaders.com. The reports were saved on September 10, 2026, and you can open them and run the same tools yourself [2].
Why a hand-written page ships less code
WordPress builds each page on the server from a theme and a stack of plugins. Every plugin can add its own scripts and styles to every page, whether the page needs them or not.
Astro works the other way round. Its documentation lists “Zero JS, by default” as a core feature: pages are built ahead of time as plain HTML, and JavaScript is added only where a page needs something interactive [3]. A contact form, a menu and a gallery each get exactly the code they use. Nothing else travels to the visitor’s phone.
We do not use Framer or Webflow for client sites. We build by hand so that each page carries only the code it needs.
Security: fewer parts to attack
Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than in 2024. Of those, 91% were in plugins, 9% in themes and 6 in WordPress core itself [4]. The lesson is not that WordPress core is weak. The lesson is that every plugin you add is another piece of software someone must keep updated.
A site built the way we build it has no database and no login page to attack, and no plugin marketplace behind it. That removes a whole category of risk. It does not remove all risk: we still keep the site’s dependencies up to date, and we still check the security headers on every build.
What it costs to keep
The build price is one number. The yearly bill is the one owners forget. One agency that publishes its estimates puts the realistic yearly cost of a WordPress business site, for hosting, paid plugins and maintenance, at $700 to $2,100. The same agency puts a comparable Astro site at $0 to $200 [5]. Treat both as one agency’s estimate, not a rule.
The hosting part is easy to check. Cloudflare Pages has a free plan with 500 builds per month and 100 custom domains per project [6]. Vercel’s free Hobby plan is for non-commercial, personal use only, so a business site on Vercel needs a paid Pro plan, at $20 per developer seat per month [7]. That is why we let you choose the host and tell you the terms before you decide.
| WordPress site | Our Astro site | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Paid hosting plan | Free plans exist (Cloudflare, Netlify); Vercel needs a paid plan for business use |
| Plugins | Often paid, renewed yearly | None to license or update |
| Updates | Core, theme and every plugin | The site’s dependencies, handled in our maintenance plan |
| Editing text | Built-in editor | Through us, or through an editor we add |
Hosting is not the only saving, and it is not free of work. Someone still needs to look after the site. Our maintenance plan is $119 a month, and it is optional.
Where WordPress is the better choice
WordPress wins in three situations. A team of five or more non-technical people publishing every day needs the editor WordPress gives them. A store that already runs well on WooCommerce may not be worth moving. A business that depends on a niche plugin with no equivalent should keep it [5].
If none of those is you, and you have a marketing or service site with a few dozen pages, a static build fits, and the numbers in the sections above are the reason. If you want to edit text yourself, we can add an editor to an Astro site. Ask us before you decide.
What moving from WordPress involves
A migration keeps what search engines and customers already know: your page addresses, your text, your images and your page titles. We rebuild the pages in Astro, set a permanent redirect from every old address to its new one, and measure the result with the same tools as before.
Things that change: plugins are replaced by code or by a service, and your admin login goes away. We tell you exactly what will be replaced before we start, in writing.
Measure your own site first
You do not need us for this step. Open Google PageSpeed Insights and paste your address. Look at the four scores for mobile and for desktop. Then open securityheaders.com and read the grade. Both tools are free and show their reports publicly [2].
If your scores are green, you may not need a new site. If they are red, you now have numbers to bring to any developer, including us. You can also use our own check page, which opens the same reports for your address.
Where we stand
WordPress powers 40.2% of all websites and 58.8% of those with a known content management system, according to W3Techs on September 19, 2026 [8]. It is a proven tool. For a service business that wants a fast, low-upkeep site, we think a hand-built Astro site is the better fit, and we show the reports to prove it.
Send us your WordPress address and we will tell you what a move would involve and what it would cost.
Sources
- Search Engine Journal, “Core Web Vitals: WordPress And Astro Versus Everyone Else,” based on HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals Technology Report, April 2026. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/core-web-vitals-wordpress-and-astro/575818/
- Sunridge Pressure Washing demo: PageSpeed Insights run, September 10, 2026, 9:11 AM ET, and securityheaders.com scan, September 10, 2026, 9:20 AM ET. Our Work page runs the same tests live.
- Astro documentation, “Why Astro.” https://docs.astro.build/en/concepts/why-astro/
- Patchstack, “State of WordPress Security in 2026.” https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2026/
- WebAloha, “WordPress vs Astro: Which Is Better for Business in 2026?” (one agency’s published estimates). https://webaloha.co/wordpress-vs-astro-for-business/
- Cloudflare, “Pages limits.” https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/
- Vercel documentation, “Hobby plan,” last updated September 14, 2026. https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby
- W3Techs, “Usage statistics of WordPress,” September 19, 2026. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress