Divi 4 has powered millions of websites, and it's still a capable builder. But Divi 5 isn't just an update - it's a ground-up reinvention designed to fix the things that have held Divi back for years. If you've ever felt like Divi was a little slow, a little clunky, or just showing its age, Divi 5 is the answer.
Divi 5 adds modern "system" features (presets, variables, canvases, interactions) that turn one-off page styling into something consistent, reusable, and easier to maintain.
It's Dramatically Faster - For You and Your Visitors
Speed is the headline story with Divi 5, and it shows up in two ways that matter.
The builder itself is noticeably snappier. Divi 4's editor could feel sluggish, especially on complex pages. Divi 5's new architecture eliminates that friction. The interface is responsive and fluid, letting you stay in a creative flow rather than waiting for things to catch up with you.
The websites it builds are faster, too.
Divi 5 introduces a Dynamic Framework and Dynamic Assets system that produces genuinely lean, performant output.
JavaScript is now modularized and loaded on demand, so only the libraries your specific page actually needs are ever fetched.
Automatic Critical CSS generation means above-the-fold content renders immediately, without waiting for styles that aren't needed yet. The result is Google PageSpeed scores of 100 on both desktop and mobile - with published benchmarks showing a First Contentful Paint of just 0.3 seconds on desktop and under 1 second on mobile.
This isn't an incremental improvement. It's a fundamentally different approach to how Divi generates and delivers code.
A Brand New Interface That Gets Out of Your Way
Divi 5 ships with a completely redesigned builder interface, and it's the biggest quality-of-life upgrade in Divi's history.
The new workspace is clean, modern, and - critically - customizable. You can adjust panel sizes, positioning, and grouping to match the way you work. Light and dark modes are both available.
The canvas lets you preview your site at any width and zoom level, so you're always designing with accurate context. Several new interface features make complex work feel straightforward:
The Command Center lets power users execute builder actions — navigating, adding elements, jumping to settings — with keyboard-driven speed, the way professionals expect.
The Layers Panel gives you a structured, searchable overview of your layout hierarchy, making it easy to select and reorder elements without hunting around the canvas.
Right-click contextual menus surface relevant actions exactly when and where you need them.
Settings Search and Filtering means you no longer have to remember where a specific option lives. Search by keyword, or filter to see only modified settings, only fields using variables, or only color settings.
The Canvases Editor provides a dedicated, detached workspace for off-canvas elements like popups, slide-ins, and navigation drawers — things that Divi 4 had no clean way to handle.
Together, these changes make Divi 5 feel like a tool that was designed with intent, rather than one that accumulated features over time.
A Modern Technical Foundation
Under the hood, Divi 5 represents a clean break from a decade of technical debt.
Divi 4 stores content using WordPress shortcodes - a format that has well-known limitations around nesting complexity, performance overhead, and compatibility.
Divi 5 moves to a block-based storage format similar to Gutenberg's approach, which is faster to parse, easier to maintain, and opens the door for better cross-compatibility with the WordPress ecosystem.
The entire codebase has been refactored from scratch. A new builder API makes it easier for both the Elegant Themes team and third-party developers to build and maintain modules.
This matters to you as a user because it means new features will arrive faster, and bugs will be fewer and easier to fix.
A Real Design System, Not Just Global Styles
Divi 4 offered global styles, but keeping a site visually consistent still required a lot of manual effort. Divi 5 elevates this into a proper design system.
Element Presets and Option Group Presets let you define reusable style classes that automatically apply to new elements. Update a preset once, and it propagates across your entire site.
Global Variables for colors, sizes, fonts, images, and more can be placed into any applicable field across thousands of settings. Instead of hardcoding a hex value in dozens of places, you define it once.
Relative Colors with HSL let you build structured, dynamic color palettes. Adjust a base color's hue, saturation, or lightness and watch derived shades update automatically.
The Style Inspector gives you an aggregated view of the colors, fonts, and presets in use across your selection, making it easy to spot inconsistencies and swap values globally.
Layout Building That Matches How the Web Works Today
Divi 4's row-and-column layout model was designed for an earlier era of web design.
Divi 5 replaces it with native CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid support, along with nested layout capabilities.
These are the actual layout primitives the modern web is built on, which means you're working with the grain of the technology rather than fighting it.
Responsive design is easier, more precise, and requires far less workaround.
Seven customizable breakpoints (up from three in Divi 4) give you fine-grained control over how your layouts adapt at every screen size.
What Stayed the Same
Divi 5 is fully backward compatible.
Your existing Divi 4 websites can be migrated with a single click, and legacy modules continue to be supported.
Upgrading is free for all Divi members - it's available as a standard theme update.
The Divi ecosystem you rely on - Divi AI, Divi Cloud, the Marketplace, Divi Dash - all continue to work alongside Divi 5.
Divi 4 vs. Divi 5: At a Glance
Area | Divi 4 | Divi 5 |
Core architecture | Mature, but carries a decade of technical debt | Rebuilt from scratch; new API and modern tech stack |
Storage format | Shortcode-heavy content structure | Block-based (Gutenberg-compatible) |
Builder speed | Can feel sluggish on complex pages | Noticeably faster; rebuilt for responsiveness |
Front-end performance | Standard WordPress output | Dynamic Framework; 100/100 PageSpeed achievable |
Interface | Functional but dated | Fully redesigned; customizable, modern, dark/light mode |
Layout engine | Traditional block (row/column) model with constraints | Native CSS Flexbox + CSS Grid + nested layouts |
Responsive breakpoints | 3 fixed breakpoints | 7 customizable breakpoints |
Design system | Basic global styles | Presets, Variables, Relative Colors, Style Inspector |
Off-canvas UI | No native support | Canvases Editor (popups, drawers, slide-ins) |
Interactivity | Very limited | No-code Interactions with selector and breakpoint triggers |
Power-user tools | Manual navigation | Command Center, Settings Search, Right-click menus |
HTML semantics | Generic wrappers | Semantic element control + custom HTML wrappers |
Migration | N/A | One-click migration; free for all Divi members |
The Bottom line
Divi 5 isn't a marginal upgrade. It's a rebuilt foundation that makes everything faster, a redesigned interface that makes building more enjoyable, and a design system that makes the results more consistent and professional.
Whether you're starting a new site or looking to bring an existing one forward, Divi 5 is the version of Divi that was worth waiting for.