The short answer
Hyvä is faster, simpler and cheaper to maintain than Luma, and it runs on the same Magento backend. Since November 2025 it is also free, so the old "licence cost" argument for staying on Luma is gone. Luma's remaining advantage is universal extension support. For most stores, especially those failing Core Web Vitals on mobile, moving to Hyvä is the single biggest performance gain available.
Side-by-side comparison
| Luma | Hyvä | |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend stack | RequireJS, jQuery, Knockout.js, LESS | Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS |
| Lighthouse (mobile) | Typically 30–50 | Typically 95+ |
| Largest Contentful Paint | ~4 seconds | Under 1 second |
| JavaScript per page | Hundreds of KB | About 90% less |
| Extension support | Universal | Storefront features need Hyvä compatibility |
| Customisation | LESS overrides, Knockout templates | Utility classes, small Alpine components |
| Licence | Free, ships with Magento | Free and open source since Nov 2025 |
| Checkout | Luma checkout | Luma fallback or Hyvä Checkout (paid) |
| Requirements | Any Magento 2.4 | Magento 2.4.4-p9+, PHP 8.1–8.4 |
| Backend, admin, data | Magento | Same Magento, unchanged |
Measure the gap on your own store
Before deciding, get your own numbers. It takes ten minutes:
- Open Google PageSpeed Insights and test your home page, a busy category page and your best-selling product page.
- Look at the top section, "Discover what your real users are experiencing". That is field data from Chrome users, and it is what Google uses.
- Note LCP (loading, good is under 2.5s), INP (responsiveness, good is under 200ms) and CLS (layout stability, good is under 0.1) on mobile.
- If any is orange or red on mobile, the theme is very likely part of the cause. A Hyvä store with the same hosting and catalog usually moves all three into the green.
Want a second opinion? Our free performance audit separates theme problems from hosting, image and script problems, so you fix the right thing.
Why Luma is slow and Hyvä isn't
Luma was built to showcase every Magento feature, not to be fast. Every page loads a module loader and several JavaScript libraries, then builds parts of the page in the browser. On a mid-range phone that pushes Largest Contentful Paint towards four seconds and makes taps feel sluggish.
Hyvä sends finished HTML with a small stylesheet and a tiny JavaScript runtime. Pages paint almost immediately and respond quickly, which is why Hyvä stores routinely pass all three Core Web Vitals.
What each option really costs
Neither theme has a licence fee any more, so compare running costs instead:
| Stay on Luma | Move to Hyvä | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront | None | Migration from $999 for a standard store |
| Every frontend change | Slower: LESS, Knockout and RequireJS | Faster: Tailwind and Alpine |
| Performance work | Recurring; hard to fix fully | Mostly solved by the theme |
| Lost sales from slow pages | Ongoing, especially on mobile | Our clients average +26% conversion after launch |
For most stores with meaningful mobile traffic, the migration pays for itself through conversion and lower development costs. Our annual maintenance plan includes a Luma-to-Hyvä migration if you'd rather spread the cost.
Extension compatibility
Luma's real advantage: any extension with a storefront component was built for it. On Hyvä, backend-only extensions work immediately, while storefront features need a compatibility module. Many vendors ship them, and since the open-source switch they are available with Hyvä's free licence key. For the rest, a custom compatibility module usually takes one to five days.
SEO impact
Switching from Luma to Hyvä does not change URLs, product data or meta data, because only the frontend changes. Speed and cleaner HTML usually help search performance. The real risk is rebuilt templates accidentally dropping structured data or meta tags, which a before-and-after crawl catches before launch.
Decision checklist
Move to Hyvä now if two or more of these apply:
- Mobile LCP or INP is orange or red in PageSpeed Insights field data
- More than half your traffic is on phones
- Simple frontend changes take days
- You'll stay on Magento for at least two more years
Wait (for now) if: you're replatforming away from Magento within a year, or your store depends on storefront extensions with no Hyvä compatibility and no budget to build it.
Ready? Our Luma to Hyvä migration usually takes about two weeks.