Pagination vs Infinite Scroll

We all know that infinite scroll is the hotness 🔥. We are so familiar with this pattern from our copious hours of training from our favorite social media apps. So if infinite scroll is the new new, can we safely kill off pagination? Is this pattern already dead? If not, why not?

Pagination 📖

Books traditionally have a table of contents menu. The Christian Bible has page numbers, chapters, and verses for lightning-quick reference.

Pros 👍

The most familiar way to navigate data
Comprehend the total scope of content
A mental sense of progress
Jump to the beginning
Jump to a specific page
Jump to the end
Refer to a result living in a specific page number
Faster browser performance
A fixed height can allow for multiple lists on one page and avoid accidental scrolling

“With pagination, there is a beginning and an end. People can anticipate the effort required to scan the page. There is a happy sense of completion when a page is reviewed. Pagination gives people control to decide whether or not to continue to the next page. The choices on smaller pages are easier to evaluate because fewer options feel less overwhelming.”
- Nielsen Norman Group

Cons 👎

Requires clicking a button (sometimes hidden below scroll)
Limits the number of records available on the screen at one time
Counting results and pages can be a costly/slow server operation
“Select All” becomes unclear. Selecting all on this page? Or all total records?
There can be many more challenging UX use cases to solve for unless you use a pre-built plugin

Infinite scroll ♾️

Pros 👍

One less UI chrome cluttering up your interface
Less competition to comprehension of content
Effortless one-handed interaction on mobile. Can scroll either vertically (Think Twitter) or horizontally (Think Tinder)
F.O.M.O. for the next unseen result
Preloading upcoming results can reduce friction to consume more content (Think social media feeds or Netflix auto-play)

Cons 👎

Can quickly choke performance on browser to maintain all the loaded data
Easier to do with gestures on mobile than mouse on a desktop
If you have multiple lists on a single page, you won’t be able to scroll to load
No way to jump down the list
Accessibility concerns while navigating on a keyboard
The scroll bar doesn’t accurately refelect your real progress and isn’t comfortable to use

“Endless scrolling is not recommended for goal-oriented finding tasks, such as those requiring people to locate specific content or compare options.”
- Nielsen Norman Group

“locating a previously found item on an extremely long page is inefficient, especially if that item is placed many scrolling segments down.”
- Nielsen Norman Group