9 Best Free WordPress Pagination Plugins For 2023

Numbering the pages is an essential requirement for any blog that has a large number of posts. That’s why it forms a part of the core features of WordPress. WordPress offers simple pagination settings for your blog. At the end of the post, you’ll see options for moving to the “Next Post” or the “Previous Post“. These options allow readers to access the immediately following or preceding post. These limited options will suffice if you have a limited number of posts on your blog. In such a case, you may not need to install WordPress Pagination plugins.

Without pagination, your web pages display dozens of posts, making it difficult for a reader. But if you are an active blogger and have racked up pages and pages of content on your blog, you should offer a better option to readers to flip through your content. They should not have to find relevant content after wading through many pages. Instead, you can enable them to skip directly to the page they want.

Another advantage of pagination is that it prevents loading all your pages simultaneously. This can give a small boost to your site’s loading speed. Besides, it provides links to other pages on your site. Regarding WordPress, thousands of themes are available, including a pagination feature. But you can also use plugins if you want maximum control over pagination without code.

WordPress Pagination Plugins can help you number the pages on your blog and aid readers in moving to the relevant page directly.

Let’s get started on our list,

Free WordPress Pagination Plugins

Many plugins are free in the WordPress directory to add a pagination function to your website. Some allow you to style the links or even include page numbers in a slider. They can prove to be of great help in content-heavy blogs.

1. WP-PageNavi (Most Popular)

WP-PageNavi is the most popular plugin to number your pages with close to a million active installs. It helps you create fancy pagination links for your blog by generating the template tag wp_pagenavi(). Using this template tag, you can replace the default WordPress pagination.

The plugin adds a new tab under Settings from where you can customize the text for the current, first and last pages, and for the number of pages to display. You can set the number of pages and customize the indicators for the next and previous pages. A few options are available to style the pagination, and you can make changes from the default style by clicking on a drop-down. It’s unnecessary to display all serial numbers consecutively, you can display numbers in multiples such as 5, 10, 15. This can be helpful if the number of pages on your blog is huge. Another option is to use CSS to style your pagination to align with your blog’s theme.

Active Installations: 700,000+

Price: Completely free

2. WP-Paginate

WP-Paginate is another popular plugin that gives you flexibility in offering your readers some neat navigation features on your website. And providing more links to your content, improves SEO.

On the plugin settings page, you’ll find a CSS tab that you can use to add custom CSS for your pagination links. You can customize the pagination label, and you can change the previous and next post links using code or plain text. The later versions of the plugin will also paginate post comments, a useful feature if your blog receives a load of comments. After activating the plugin, you must replace some code in your theme files.

A page range option allows you to set the number of links to display before and after the current page. A pro version supports multisites and includes eleven ready-made layouts and a customizer.

Active Installations: 40,000+

Price: Free

3. Pagination by BestWebSoft

Pagination by BestWebSoft is a simple plugin that automatically adds custom pagination to your posts, tags, categories, search results, and author pages. You can customize the pagination type and location on the settings page.

The plugin allows you to display arrows to indicate Next and Previous and customize them. It’s also possible to hide the pagination for select pages, and align the paginations to left, right or center. You can opt for the long or short display type – the long display lists every page number consecutively, the short type skips numbers and displays them in multiples. The Pro version adds Load More buttons and Infinite Scroll.

Active Installations: 7,000+

Price: Free version available on WordPress.org, link below.

4. SX No Homepage Pagination

While all the free WordPress pagination plugins focus on adding the feature to the page, this one does things the opposite way. Yes, it removes it. That said, if you would like to remove any home page pagination from your website, SX No Homepage Pagination is the one plugin you should put into play. Regarding the initial setup, you upload/download it, activate it, and are ready to roll. Indeed, it truly is as simple as it sounds.

Bear in mind, even if there is no pagination, it does not necessarily mean that WordPress does not have it in the HTML header. With SX No Homepage Pagination plugin, you completely remove it without breaking a single drop of sweat. Last but not least, SX No Homepage Pagination works on all default home pages like a dream.

Active Installations: 1,000+

Price: Free version available on WordPress.org, link below.

5. Pagination Styler for WooCommerce

You can now fully style your pagination for every online store and eCommerce platform on WooCommerce. You pretty much have complete creative freedom when designing and fine-tuning the pagination section of your online store. And there is no need to perform any coding to make it happen. By simply installing and activating Pagination Styler for WooCommerce plugin, you can get things moving forward without hassle.

Bear in mind, if you would truly like to take your WooCommerce pagination to a new degree, take the plunge and go with the premium version of Pagination Styler for WooCommerce. Some of the features include custom pagination, text and color. Moreover, you can also precisely change the look and tailor it to your branding regulations. In contrast, keeping things as simple as possible wins, all the other occasions you want to customize your webspace to the last detail.

Active Installations: 1,000+

Price: Free

6. Alphabetic Pagination

Alphabetic Pagination is useful for displaying search results on a single page or post. Working with the post editor and inserting shortcodes, you can filter pages, posts, WooCommerce products, media, authors or anything in your content. The results can be displayed on a single page or post alphabetically.

This plugin is a great option for music websites, book stores or eCommerce websites. Or you can use it to list users or manage member profiles. Some of the features are available only with the pro version of the plugin.

Active Installations: 7,000+

Price: Free

7. Floating Links

Floating Links is a flexible and highly practical free WordPress pagination plugin with various options and possibilities. First and foremost, Floating Links adds a new extension to your website that every user always has access to. This could be next and previous post, back to top button, random post links, you name it. If that sparks your interest, adding great pagination function to your website, now you can with the handy and easy-to-employ Floating Links.

Floating Links features include a primary and secondary bar, enabling navigation in the same category, next and previous post data on hover, an option to show or hide selected buttons, and an icon that shows a feature to copy the current URL. Of course, Floating Links also has customization configurations for you to style it according to your liking.

Active Installations: 500+

Price: Free

Premium WordPress Pagination Plugins

Only two plugins are featured in the premium plugins section. They offer many customization options, making adding and managing pagination on your website easier.

8. Next Post Fly Box

Next Post Fly Box adds a floating popup box on the left or right side of the window. The floating popup box will allow a reader to navigate to the Previous or Next post, depending on the conditions selected in the plugin’s options panel.

The plugin is jQuery powered. The plugin supports custom post types and post categories. Many settings are available on the Admin area, where you can sort post settings and adjust the dimensions of the box.

Active Installations: 750+

Price: $17 (one time payment)

9. Epic Split Post

If we offered you a free page break WordPress plugin earlier, her is a premium alternative. Epic Split Post is a powerful and practical tool that unlocks many options for splitting and breaking content in half, thirds or any other custom variations. Get rid of endless content that takes a minute to scroll to the bottom and deliver a striking and unforgettable experience with Epic Split Post.

You will find a whopping collection of twenty different layouts in the kit. You can split content pretty much however you fancy. There are also three content load methods; normal, slider and Ajax. Additionally, you can customize colors and set custom headings. The final product will be a stunning, mobile-ready design that will beautifully decorate your website.

Active Installations: 100+

Price: $24 (one time payment)

Wrapping Up

The plugins on this list add features that improve your website content’s navigation. They make page management easy and can increase revenues by adding pages where you get to place ads. WordPress can handle simple pagination by default. It improves your SEO by increasing page views and counting on the next page as page views instead of a bounce. But it’s also advisable not to break up content into too many pages to avoid being considered thin content by Google. Use Pagination wisely, and it will surely enhance user experience, a small boost in SEO rank may be a bonus.