Straight answer: use 2 to 5 hashtags per pin if you use any at all, and stop treating them as the thing that grows your account. Pinterest stopped using hashtags as a search filter years ago, so the real work happens in your title, your description, and your board names, not in a pile of tags bolted onto the end of a caption.
The number people want
If you came here for a single figure, here it is: 2 to 5 hashtags per pin, placed at the end of your description, never at the start. Not 20. Not 30. Pinterest's own help documentation says hashtags are treated the same as any other word in your description, so stacking them doesn't earn you extra reach the way it once did on Instagram or TikTok.
I know that's a smaller number than a lot of Pinterest strategy posts give you, and I know some of those posts are still telling people to cram in 15 to 20 tags because that was the advice in 2019 and 2020, back when Pinterest did have a hashtag search filter. That filter is gone. It was removed in 2022, and Pinterest quietly confirmed to several marketing publications that hashtags no longer function as a discovery tool the way they used to.
What happened when I tested this with a client
In 2023 I was running the Pinterest account for a home decor brand, a small UK candle and homeware business with about 40,000 monthly viewers at the time. We split their pins for eight weeks: half went out with 15 to 20 hashtags stuffed at the bottom of the description, half went out with 3 targeted hashtags and nothing else, both with the same keyword-rich titles and descriptions.
The results were flat. Impressions sat within 6 percent of each other across both groups. Saves and outbound clicks, the two metrics the client cared about because they wanted people driving traffic to their site, showed no meaningful difference either. What did move the numbers was rewriting titles to lead with the keyword phrase (going from "Autumn Vibes" to "Autumn Candle Gift Set for Cosy Nights In") and rewriting the first sentence of every description so it front-loaded the search term rather than a cute intro line.
That's the uncomfortable bit nobody likes to say out loud: the tag count you agonise over probably isn't the lever. Most Pinterest advice still frames hashtags as a growth hack because it's an easy, countable thing to tell people to do. Counting hashtags feels like strategy. Rewriting 200 pin titles to be searchable feels like admin. People choose the thing that feels like strategy.
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Where the real keyword work happens
Pinterest is a visual search engine, not a social feed, and it behaves more like Google than like Instagram. That means the placement that matters most is:
- Title: up to 100 characters, keyword in the first 30 if you can manage it
- Description: up to 500 characters, front-load the first 50 to 60 characters because that's roughly what shows before "more" on mobile
- Board name: use the actual phrase people search, not a personality-driven name like "Home Sweet Home", use "Small Kitchen Storage Ideas" instead
- Alt text: 500 characters in the pin editor, a second chance to add a keyword variation without repeating yourself word for word
- Image text overlay: Pinterest's visual recognition reads text baked into the image too, so the words on your graphic count
Hashtags, if you use them, sit at the bottom of that list. Add 2 to 5, make sure they're specific rather than generic (#smallkitchenstorage beats #home), and treat them as a small extra rather than the main event.
A quick step-by-step for a single pin
Here's the process I now use with every client account, start to finish, per pin:
- Step 1: Search your main topic in Pinterest's own search bar and note the autocomplete suggestions, that's your free keyword research done in 30 seconds
- Step 2: Write a title under 100 characters with the strongest keyword phrase in the first half
- Step 3: Write a description of 300 to 500 characters, two to three sentences, natural language, no keyword stuffing
- Step 4: Add 2 to 5 specific hashtags at the very end
- Step 5: Fill in alt text with a slightly different phrasing of your main keyword
- Step 6: Assign the pin to a board whose name also contains a version of that keyword
Six steps, maybe four minutes once you've done it a few times. None of it involves counting hashtags to a magic number, because there isn't one.
Where this myth comes from
A lot of the "use 20 tags" advice got carried over from Instagram habits, where hashtags did function as a discovery layer for far longer, and creators simply assumed Pinterest worked the same way. If you're managing both platforms, it's worth keeping a clear line in your head between the two, and my own rundown of the Instagram tools I use touches on exactly this, because the tagging behaviour that helps on one platform can be dead weight on another.
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The other reason the myth sticks around is that Pinterest itself is inconsistent in its own messaging. Some help centre pages still mention hashtags as a discovery aid, which is technically true in the sense that the words within them are indexed, while other Pinterest staff, in interviews and creator webinars, have said plainly that hashtags carry no special search weight over regular text. Both things are sort of true at once, which is confusing, and it's easier for writers to repeat the old advice than untangle it.
What matters more than tag count
If I'm honest about where the effort should go, it's here, in this order:
- Pin design that stops the scroll, tall format, readable text, strong contrast, covered in more depth in my piece on creating visually appealing marketing media
- Fresh pins for existing content rather than reposting the same image endlessly
- Consistent posting, 3 to 5 fresh pins a day rather than a burst of 20 once a month
- Linking pins to content that's worth clicking through to, which is where a wider content plan built through things like guest blogging for authority and traffic feeds back into stronger, more link-worthy pages for Pinterest to point at
Tags are the smallest lever on that list, and I'd rather a client spend their limited time each week on pin design and titles than on debating whether 4 hashtags beats 6.
Related reading: how many instagram reels are posted per day.
Frequently asked questions
Do Pinterest hashtags still work in 2026?
They still function as searchable text within your description, but they no longer act as a discovery filter the way they did before 2022, so adding more of them doesn't reliably increase reach. Use a handful of specific ones, then put your effort into the title and description instead.
What's the maximum number of hashtags I should use per pin?
Stick to 2 to 5 specific, relevant hashtags placed at the end of your description. Going higher than that doesn't show any measurable benefit in the testing I've done across client accounts, and it can make the caption look cluttered and less trustworthy to a real person reading it.
Should hashtags go in the title or the description?
Keep your title free of hashtags entirely, since that space is limited to 100 characters and should be pure keyword phrase. Place any hashtags at the very end of the description, after your natural sentences, not mixed through the middle of them.
Does using more tags mean more impressions?
No. In an eight week split test on a client account, pins with 15 to 20 hashtags performed within 6 percent of pins with just 3, on both impressions and saves. What moved the numbers was rewriting titles and the opening line of descriptions to lead with a real search phrase, not the tag count.
