10+ Best Free WordPress Slider Plugins 2026 [Expert Pick]

Smart Slider 3

WordPress.Org Stats of Smart Slider 3

Requires: 4.9 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.6
Active Installs: 800,000+
Ratings: 4.9 out of 5 stars (1,000 Votes)

Smart Slider 3 is the brand new version of the WordPress slider plugin Smart Slider 2 that has been closed in 2018. The old Smart Slider 2 had 20,000+ active installs and was rated 4.5 out of 5.

The free version of Smart Slider 3 comes with many powerful features including Drag & Drop slider builder, Image, Video, and post sliders, and more amazing features. Using the plugin to add sliders to WordPress is easy thanks to its visual slider editor.

Although the Smart Slider 3 plugin has only 40,000 active installs ─ at the time of writing this post ─ which is smaller than other plugins like Meta Slider which has 700,000+ active installs (usually ranked as the #1 free WordPress slider plugin). Yet we think this plugin will be the most downloaded free WordPress slider plugin ever in a short period of time. That’s why we ranked it in the first place on our list as the best free WordPress slider plugin.

Update April 2022: Smart Slider 3 now has more active installs (800K) than MetaSlider (700K).

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Meta Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Meta Slider Plugin

Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Last Updated: 5/2016
Active Installs: 700,000+
Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (342 Votes)

Meta Slider is currently the most popular free WordPress Slider plugin in the plugin repository. The slider plugin allows you to add sliders to your website easily. To add a slider to your site; select the images from your WordPress media library, set links and captions, select the slider type you prefer, and paste the shortcode into your template or post.

There’s also a premium version of the plugin which gives you more features like YouTube & Vimeo slides, HTML sliders, Custom slider themes, Premium support, and more…

This great plugin comes with four built-in jQuery sliders:

• Flex Slider 2 – Responsive, 2 transition effects, carousel mode
• Responsive Slides – Responsive & lightweight
• Nivo Slider – Responsive, 16 transition effects, 4 themes
• Coin Slider – 4 transition effects

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Master Slider – Responsive Touch Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Master Slider – Responsive Touch Slider

Requires: 5.0 or higher
Active Installs: 100,000+
Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (118 Votes)

Master Slider – Responsive Touch Slider is really one of the best, feature-full, responsive free WordPress Slider plugins. It is being used on more than 90,000 websites at the time of writing this post and has an average rating of 4.3/5 based on 110+ reviews.

The free version of the plugin comes with many features and it is compatible with almost all known browsers. The plugin also comes with import & export functionality and supports both Touch Swipe Navigation and Mouse Swipe Navigation on Desktop.

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Huge-IT Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Huge-IT Slider Plugin

Requires: 3.0.1 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Active Installs: 100,000+
Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (243 Votes)

UPDATE: Huge-IT Slider plugin was closed on February 7, 2018, for violating WordPress.org’s guidelines and is no longer available for download.

Huge-IT WordPress Slider Plugin is a great free slider plugin for WordPress. It allows you to add beautiful sliders to your website easily. The plugin is fully responsive and supports both image and video sliders. You can use the plugin to add sliders to posts, pages, widgets, and template files; thanks to the auto-generated shortcode.

Looking for free plugins?
Here’re The 10 Best Free WordPress Plugins

The free version comes with many great features that are usually available in premium WordPress slider plugins only.

Those features include:

• There is no limit to the number of sliders you can include on one page.
• The plugin supports Drag and Drop functionality: you can Drag and drop images to rearrange their sequence in the slider.
• You can use a different slider for different pages.
• The slider is fully responsive.
• You easily add the slider to your website using the auto-generated shortcode.
• You can add titles and descriptions to the slider images and videos.
• The title and description support HTML, and you can add links to them.
• You can simply add a slider in widgets directly from the widgets admin panel.
• The inner links will open in the same window, but external links will open in a new browser tab.

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Slider WD ─ Free WordPress Slider Plugin

WordPress.Org Stats of Slider WD WordPress Slider Plugin

Requires: 3.4 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.6
Active Installs: 40,000+
Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (102 Votes)

With more than 40K downloads and an average rating of 4.5/5, Slider WD is considered to be one of the top free WordPress slider plugins in the WordPress.Org plugin repository. The plugin gives you the ability to add a responsive slider to your WordPress-powered website easily.

There free version of the plugin comes with many great features, but if you even need more features you can upgrade to the premium WD Slider plugin.

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How to install & use the Slider WD plugin

Depicter

Depicter is a free visual slider editor for WordPress with a live drag & drop functionality. The plugin is developed by the Averta team, the creators of the know WordPress slider plugin Master Slider.

Depicter allows you to build and publish good-looking, powerful visual sliders on your WordPress site with ease, thanks to its drag & drop slider editor.

After downloading and installing this WordPress plugin, you can add a responsive slider to your website in 4 easy steps:

1. Start

You can create a slider from scratch or start with a pre-made template from the templates library that comes with Depicter and customize it to your needs with ease.

2. Design

After starting a slider, you can now design it by adding text, images, videos, shapes, and more to the slider and style them the way you want.

Moreover, Depicter also comes with a free content library of 3+M images, 30K videos, mockups, pre-built templates, vectors, and elements that can be used to build the slider.

3. Animate

To make your sliders more interactive and engaging, Depicter is packed with a library of animations and interactive actions that can be easily added to the slider. Those smooth animations are customizable as well and you have the freedom to adjust them according to your needs.

4. Publish

Finally, after creating, designing, and animating the slider it is time to publish it on your website for your visitors.

This free WordPress slider plugin is SEO-friendly and lightweight and comes with comprehensive navigation controls and a customizable video player that allows you to play YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted videos as well.

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Easing Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Easing Slider

Requires: 4.5 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.6
Active Installs: 80,000+
Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (103 Votes)

Easing Slider is another known WordPress slider plugin. The plugin is simple and doesn’t require technical knowledge. The plugin allows you to add responsive sliders to WordPress right from your admin panel. It has full integration with WordPress media library and Admin panel as well.

There are also available premium addons if you want to add more features like Video slides, lightbox, add images from external sites via URL, etc…

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Cyclone Slider 2

WordPress.Org Stats of Cyclone Slider 2

Requires: 3.5 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Active Installs: 70,000+
Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (100 Votes)

The seventh plugin in our best free WordPress slider plugins list is Cyclone Slider 2. The Cyclone Slider 2 plugin is popular on the WordPress.org plugins repository. It allows you to add the sliders easily using shortcode or PHP function (to add the slider to your theme).

The free version Supports 5 different slide types: image slides, YouTube & Vimeo video slides, HTML slides, and testimonial slides. The plugin also is translation-ready and supports RTL languages like Arabic.

Want a theme with RTL support?
Take a look at our list of The 10 Best Arabic WordPress Themes

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Responsive WordPress Slider – Soliloquy Lite

WordPress.Org Stats for Responsive WordPress Slider – Soliloquy Lite

Requires: 4.0.0 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.6.0
Active Installs: 80,000+
Ratings: 3.5 out of 5 stars (123 Votes)

Soliloquy Lite WP Slider Plugin is one of the most popular free responsive slider plugins for WordPress. The plugin allows you to add sliders to WordPress easily and quickly. The sliders are Search Engine Optimized and give you the ability to set title and alt tags for the slider images.

Soliloquy Lite comes with Drag & Drop feature in both adding and arranging the slides. You can also add an unlimited number of slides as the plugin uses custom post types.

The sliders are fully responsive and touch swipe is also enabled. To add sliders to your website you can use shortcodes and template tags.

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Ultimate Responsive Image Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Ultimate Responsive Image Slider

Requires: 3.8 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Active Installs: 30,000+
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (77 Votes)

One of the top-rated WordPress slider plugins is Ultimate Responsive Image Slider. The slider is very responsive and works smoothly on all screen sizes. The free version of the plugin comes with 20+ features like Drag & Drop images and slides adding arranging.

You can also embed an unlimited number of sliders on one page with an unlimited number of images in each slider as well. There’s also a premium version of the plugin if you want more features.

Embedding the slider is easy, just add this shortcode [URIS id=123] (replace 123 with the slider ID) to any post or page and the slider will be embedded.

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Smooth Slider

WordPress.Org Stats of Smooth Slider

Requires: 3.0 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Active Installs: 20,000+
Ratings: 4 out of 5 stars (61 Votes)

Another Free WordPress Slider Plugin is Smooth Slider. The plugin allows you to add sliders easily and quickly without the need for any coding knowledge. You can easily embed the slider anywhere on your website using a widget, shortcode, and template tag.

The plugin also allows you to preview the slider in your WordPress admin panel before you publish it. The sliders are responsive and Search Engine Optimized. Smooth Slider comes with many useful features and you can even add more features by upgrading to the premium version.

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Responsive Slider

WordPress.Org Stats for Responsive Slider

Requires: 3.3 or higher
Compatible up to: 4.5.3
Active Installs: 20,000+
Ratings: 4.1 out of 5 stars (34 Votes)

Responsive Slider is the last free Slider plugin for WordPress on the list. The plugin adds its core functionality and allows you to add simple, jQuery-powered sliders to your theme using a shortcode. If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use, free, and responsive WordPress slider plugin, then you can use this plugin or you may use one of the first 10 plugins in the list.

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