Web Developer
Carousel feature is often part of slider plugins, if you need both. If you don’t choose in this comparison, take a look at slider table.
Criteria are similar to sliders:
- all plugins are responsive
- touch gestures support is compared
- the cost is 0, free to use
JavaScript/jQuery Carousel Plugins Comparison
| Name | Dependency | Size | Swipe | Note |
| ItemSlide | no | 11kB (JS) | yes | Docs are messy, specific carousel, not for common use. |
| jCarousel | jQuery | 18kB (JS) | yes conditionally |
Heavy configuration needed, if advanced features (e.g.swipe) necessary |
| Owl Carousel | jQuery / Zepto | 42kB (JS) 3kB (CSS) |
yes | Url hash navigation is nice setting. |
| Siema | no | 12kB (JS) | yes | Implementations ready for Angular, React and Vue. |
| Slick | jQuery | 42kB (JS) 2kB (CSS) |
yes | Autoplay, center mode, variable width options available |
Summary
Firstly, in the carousel world, plugins dependent on jQuery look much better. They have more options, easy implementation and precise documentation.
Especially Slick has very rich and clean docs with plenty of different settings at your service.
Finally, in pure JavaScript Siema looks good. It is tiny, with only a couple of pre-build options, but easily extented. For more complex cases maybe Swiper from sliders comparison would fit your needs.
Do you use some other carousel plugin?