Hyvä goes open source
On 10 November 2025, Hyvä Themes B.V. announced that the Hyvä theme is now free, publicly available, and open source. The commercial licence requirement that had been in place since launch has been removed. Here is what this means in practice.
What changed
Since its launch in 2021, Hyvä required a commercial licence from Hyvä Themes B.V. at around €1,000 per year per production project. This made it a paid product — still excellent value given the performance gains it delivered, but a barrier for some developers, smaller agencies, and open-source projects.
The November 2025 announcement removed that requirement entirely. The Hyvä theme codebase is now publicly available on GitHub under an open-source licence. Anyone can install, use, modify, and contribute to it without a commercial agreement.
Why it matters for merchants
Previously, recommending Hyvä to a merchant always involved a conversation about licence costs. For a merchant already spending on Magento development, adding a ~€1,000/year line item for the theme — even a justifiable one — sometimes created friction in the decision.
With Hyvä free, that conversation no longer exists. The performance case for Hyvä over Luma was already strong. Now there is no cost barrier at all. For new Magento builds, Hyvä is the obvious default.
What stays the same
The core Hyvä theme going open source does not change the commercial reality of building a production Hyvä store. Development effort, extension compatibility work, and custom theming are all still part of the scope of a real project.
Hyvä Checkout — the separately licensed checkout experience — remains a commercial product. If your project requires Hyvä Checkout specifically, that licence is still needed. For standard checkout flows, the base theme and Magento's built-in checkout are sufficient.
What it means for the ecosystem
Open-sourcing Hyvä removes the last meaningful adoption barrier. The performance argument has always been clear — Hyvä consistently achieves Lighthouse scores of 90–100 on mobile, against Luma's typical 20–50. The ecosystem, while smaller than Luma's, has been growing steadily since 2021.
Going open source is likely to accelerate both adoption and extension compatibility. More agencies will now default to Hyvä for new builds. Extension developers who previously skipped Hyvä-compatible templates due to the smaller market now have stronger incentive to support it.
For anyone who has been watching Hyvä from the sidelines waiting for the right moment — this is it.
Key facts