Why carousels work

The short answer

Across the largest studies of 2025 and 2026, four things keep showing up:

1. They earn more engagement. On LinkedIn, document posts (LinkedIn’s carousels) average 1.83× the engagement rate of text posts. On Instagram, carousels average 1.43× single images. On Facebook, albums get the most views and shares of any format.
2. They hold attention. Each swipe is a reason to stay on the post. LinkedIn ranks posts partly on time spent, and Instagram shows an unswiped carousel again from its second slide.
3. They get saved. Instagram carousels get nine times the saves of single images, and a saved post keeps being seen.
4. They are still underused. Brands post LinkedIn documents only once or twice a month, and in Sendible’s 12 million scheduled posts for 2025, only about one media post in four was a carousel.

They don’t win everywhere. Video still reaches more people on TikTok and Instagram, and on X a single image does better than several. On Threads, no study separates carousels from single images yet. The table sums it up; the sections below show the numbers.

Where carousels win, platform by platform

Benchmarks from published studies, not promised results.

LinkedIn: documents are the most engaging format

On LinkedIn a carousel is a document post: a PDF you upload that people page through in the feed. Socialinsider, which tracks 2.45 million posts from 26,114 business pages, calls the native document “similar to a carousel” and ranks it the platform’s most engaging format: 6.40% engagement by impressions in Q3 2026, against 3.50% for text-only posts.

• It held for the whole of 2025. In Socialinsider’s yearly table, documents were the top format at 7.00%, ahead of multi-image posts, video, images and text (4.50%). That is up 14% on 2024.
• A second study agrees. Buffer’s 2026 report, on 52 million posts, found LinkedIn carousels had the highest median engagement of any format, about three times video and nearly seven times text posts. Buffer measures by reach, so its percentages are higher than Socialinsider’s; the order is the same.
• Few brands use it. Business pages publish documents only once or twice a month on average, so a good carousel has less competition in the feed.

LinkedIn’s own team has been pushing video, and older data put PDFs behind video and photos: Buffer’s 2023 study ranked them third. The newer, larger studies reverse that. For posting steps, see how to post a carousel on LinkedIn.

Instagram: carousels lead on engagement and saves

In Socialinsider’s data on 67.5 million brand posts, carousels averaged 0.50% engagement by followers in Q3 2026, against 0.35% for single images: 1.43× as much.

• Ahead of Reels on engagement too. In Socialinsider’s 2025 table carousels led at 0.55%, ahead of Reels (0.52%) and images (0.37%). Buffer’s 2026 medians put carousels at about 1.5× single images and 2× Reels per person reached, and Rival IQ’s 2025 industry report says carousels “took the lead on Instagram”.
• Saved nine times as often. Metricool’s 2026 study of 24 million posts found carousels get nine times the saves of single images, and beat them on every major metric.
• A second chance in the feed. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has said that if someone sees a carousel and doesn’t swipe, Instagram will often show it to them again, starting on the second slide. More slides also mean more ways to interact.
• A way into the Reels tab. Since October 2024, carousels with music can appear in the Reels tab, which reaches people who don’t follow you.

Where Reels win is reach. Buffer found Reels reach about 1.36× more people than carousels, though Fanpage Karma found the opposite in early 2025. A fair summary: carousels reliably win on engagement and saves, and the evidence on reach is mixed. To post one, see how to make a carousel on Instagram.

TikTok: fast-growing, with high engagement per view

Metricool compared 2.3 million TikTok posts from 92,000 accounts, January and February 2025 against the same months of 2026. Photo and carousel posts grew nearly 140%, against 72% for videos.

• More engagement for each view. Fanpage Karma’s study of almost 700,000 posts found TikTok carousels had an 81% higher engagement rate than videos, with about the same reach. Metricool’s 2024 benchmark also found photo posts ahead of video on engagement ratio.
• TikTok keeps building on photos. Photo posts take up to 35 images, and since September 2026 people can add up to nine photos in a single comment.

TikTok is still a video platform, though. The same Metricool study found video gets five times the reach and six times the interactions of photo posts, and Buffer’s medians put video ahead too. So on TikTok, a carousel is a strong way to get a high share of viewers to engage, not a replacement for video. See how to make a carousel on TikTok.

Facebook: albums get the most views and shares

On Facebook a carousel is an album: several photos in one post. Socialinsider’s 2026 benchmark of almost 25 million posts from brand pages says albums “lead the way when it comes to shares and views”, and it suggests turning LinkedIn and Instagram carousels into Facebook albums.

Average views per Facebook post, by page size

Organic brand-page posts, 2025. Source: Socialinsider, Facebook benchmarks

• Ahead of single images on engagement. In Q3 2026 albums averaged 0.10% engagement by followers, against 0.08% for single images. Over 2025 they were level with Reels (0.18%) and ahead of images (0.15%).
• Best for smaller pages. Socialinsider found albums win for pages under 10K followers, while text-only status posts get the most engagement on bigger pages (0.20% over 2025).
• Format matters less here. In Buffer’s 2026 data, every Facebook format sits within about a point of the others (images 5.20%, video 4.84%, text 4.76%, links 4.43%), so an album is a safe choice, not a big win.

Instagram Stories: a longer run reaches more people

Stories aren’t carousels, but a run of Stories works the same way: one idea per frame, tapped through in order. The data on how long a run should be is good.

How many viewers leave at each Story

Accounts with 1K to 1M followers, January to May 2025. The first frames lose the most viewers; after that, people stay. Source: Socialinsider, Instagram Stories benchmarks

• More frames, more reach. In the same Socialinsider data, reach rose from 6.3% of followers for a single Story to 20.5% at six and peaked at 37.8% at thirteen, then fell. Its advice: post at least six Stories a day and stop before the fourteenth.
• A second study agrees. Fanpage Karma looked at 5 million Stories and found that, except on very large profiles, a Story with many frames reaches more people. 80% of viewers were still watching after five frames and 56% after twenty. 62% of Stories already have more than one frame.
• People reply. Metricool’s 2026 Instagram study found replies to Stories up 88% in a year.

Socialinsider also found that feed posts reach more people than Stories, so Stories work best alongside carousels in the feed, not instead of them.

Threads: visual posts beat text

Threads passed 500 million monthly users in June 2026, Meta says, and a carousel there takes up to 20 photos or videos. No large study yet splits carousels from single images on Threads, but the format data points one way:

• Images get about 1.6× the engagement of text. Buffer’s 2026 medians put image posts at 4.55% of reach, against 2.79% for text and 2.34% for links. Buffer’s reading: visuals “stop the scroll more effectively”.
• Video is ahead of both, at 5.55%.
• Engagement is high in general. In Buffer’s 2024 data on 10 million posts, the median Threads post had 6.25% engagement, against 3.6% on X.

So on Threads, a carousel of slides is a strong choice over a text post. For the steps, see how to post a carousel on Threads.

X: images help, but one beats four

X takes up to four photos in a post, and it is the one feed where the data doesn’t favour carousels.

Engagement rate by post type on X

87,528 posts by the tool’s users, January 2024 to May 2026; engagements divided by impressions. Source: Ordinal, Twitter/X analytics

• Multi-image posts beat text and video on engagement rate, but a single image does better, and text posts get far more impressions.
• Images almost match text. Buffer’s 2026 medians on X: text 3.56%, images 3.40%, video 2.96%, links 2.25%.
• Threads of posts do best of all in Ordinal’s data, at 1.89%. A thread is the closest thing X has to a carousel: one point per post, in order.

On X, post your strongest slide as a single image, or turn the slides into a thread.

Pinterest and YouTube

Both take carousels, but neither has recent public data on how they perform. On Pinterest, a carousel pin holds 2 to 5 images, and promoted carousels are charged per impression, not per swipe. YouTube image posts take up to 10 images, and since April 2026 YouTube has been testing image posts and carousels in the Shorts feed.

Carousel ads

Everything above is about organic posts. Ad data is thinner and older, so treat it as a hint, not a benchmark:

• Facebook (2015). Across nearly 9,000 ad sets, Facebook found carousel link ads cost 30 to 50% less per conversion and 20 to 30% less per click than single-image link ads.
• X (2020). In Twitter’s testing, website carousel ads raised the average click-through rate by about 15% over single-asset ads.
• LinkedIn (one advertiser). In a LinkedIn case study, an agency that swapped single-image ads for document ads, with the same audience and setup, cut its cost per lead by 52% and raised its click-through rate by 64%.
• Against: in ZenABM’s 2026 look at 44 LinkedIn carousel ads, carousels had a lower click-through rate than single-image ads (0.32% against 0.42%) but the longest time spent on the ad.

What makes a carousel work

The format alone doesn’t do it; a carousel works when each swipe pays off. What the research points to:

1. A cover that makes a promise. The first slide is the post’s headline in the feed. Say what people get by the last slide.
2. One idea per slide. Short lines and big words read on a phone; if a slide needs small text, split it in two.
3. Enough slides to go somewhere. In MagicPost’s data on about 68,000 LinkedIn carousels, median likes rose from 22 at 2 to 5 slides to 49 at 9 to 12 and 58 at 13 to 20, then levelled off. It is a vendor’s data with no controls, so take it as a direction, not a rule.
4. Something worth keeping. Saves are where carousels pull furthest ahead on Instagram, so checklists, steps and frameworks do well.
5. An ending that asks for something. A question, a save, a follow: the last slide is where people decide.

aiCarousels is built around these: each ghostwriter writes one idea per slide, the text fits each slide as you edit, and Ready to post checks the cover, the slide count and the caption for the platform you picked.

How many slides each platform allows

Carousel limits by platform

From each platform’s help pages and developer documents, listed in the sources.

How to read these numbers

• Compare within one study. Socialinsider divides by impressions on LinkedIn and by followers on Instagram; Buffer divides by reach and uses medians. That is why the same format can be 6.40% in one study and 21.77% in another. This page only compares formats inside the same study.
• Most studies use their own customers’ posts. Buffer, Metricool, Fanpage Karma, Sendible, MagicPost and Ordinal study accounts on their own tools; Socialinsider and Rival IQ study brand pages. Creators are covered less well.
• Rates move. Socialinsider’s LinkedIn rates fell across every format from 2025 to Q3 2026; the gap between documents and text stayed.
• Benchmarks, not promises. These are averages across millions of posts. Your own results depend on your audience and what you post.