Not if each one has an outcome. Four entries a reader can use beat nine they have to sort through, and the page is judged on the set rather than the count.

What if I have only two

Show two and make both of them properly written up. A short honest page reads as early-career; a padded one reads as something worse.

Should I include old work

Only where it makes an argument the recent work does not. Otherwise the year on the entry is doing damage you did not intend.

Does the page count them for me

Each section of the details sheet carries a counter of how many of its entries are on the page, so the total is visible while you are still deciding.

How many should be case studies

Two. The rest carry a name, a year and one line about what changed, which is how the builder defines a project.

Guide · Portfolio

How many projects should a portfolio show

The honest answer is four to six, and the reason is not attention span. It is that a reader judges the set by its weakest member rather than its strongest.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— the floor is what gets measured, not the ceiling.

A rendered Conxfolio portfolio page open over the builder at desktop width, with the design name and the desktop and phone switches above it — The page itself, rendered at desktop width before anything is published. The candidate shown is invented.

Ask ten reviewers how many projects a portfolio should have and you get a number between three and eight. The spread is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that almost none of them are thinking about length; they are thinking about consistency.

Why the weakest entry decides

A reader looking at six pieces is not averaging them. They are forming a view of your floor, because the floor is what they would be buying. One weak entry in a set of six tells them that work of that quality can leave your desk, which is information the five strong ones cannot cancel.

This is why removing the weakest item is usually the highest-value edit available on any portfolio page, and why it feels wrong: you are deleting work to improve the page. The arithmetic is still in your favour.

The working number

Four to six entries, of which two are properly written up. A reviewer opens one case study, skims a second, and reads the outcome lines of the rest. That is the real reading pattern, and a page built for it is a page that gets used.

Below four the page reads as early-career, which is fine when it is true. Above six the entries start competing with each other for the same attention, and the effect is that your strongest piece gets less of it.

What the counters are for

Every section in the details sheet of the portfolio builder carries a counter of how many of its entries are on the page: work, experience, skills and the education, certifications and languages group each report their own total. It is a small piece of interface with an editorial effect, because it makes the number visible while you are still adding things.

Entries are switched off rather than deleted, so nothing is lost by making the page shorter. The material stays in your draft and the page shows the argument, which is the right division of labour between the two.

How to choose which ones

The one with the clearest outcome. First on the page, because the first entry sets expectations for the rest.
The one that shows range. Different register, different kind of problem.
The most recent substantial piece. Recency is evidence of its own.
The one you most want to be asked about. Because you will be.

If a candidate entry does not fit any of those four descriptions, it is probably the one to switch off. What belongs on the page covers the same decision for the other sections.

The entry that is there for volume

Every page has one: a project included because the page looked short without it. A reader cannot tell why it is there, so they assume it is representative, and the page is worse than it would have been with five entries. The test is whether you would open that entry first if somebody asked you about your work. If not, it is padding, and padding is visible.

Two case studies, not six

The other half of the ratio. Two entries with the details panel filled properly, four with a single outcome line. A page where everything is a case study cannot be scanned, and a page where nothing is cannot be trusted. The case-study page has the four-part shape and the version for work you cannot name.

Then look at the page

The step before publishing renders the real page at desktop and phone width, and the number of entries reads differently in a layout than in a form. Six entries that felt balanced in the sheet can look like a list on the page, and the repair is almost always to switch one off rather than to rewrite anything. It costs nothing to try both, because the page renders again in seconds and nothing is public until you publish.

The rest of the page counts too

Projects are not the only section with a number. Experience entries, skills chips and the education, certifications and languages group all add to the length a reader has to get through, and a page with four projects and twenty skills is not a short page.

The same rule applies to each: switch off what you would not want to be asked about. Skills in particular expand without anybody deciding to expand them, because they arrive from the résumé where a longer list was doing a different job. Ten is generous on a page; twenty is a keyword field with a design around it, and it dilutes the ten you actually meant. The counter beside the section makes that number visible while you are adding to it, which is the only reason anybody notices it has grown.

Experience entries are the other place a page quietly lengthens. A role from a previous career earns its place when the page is making an argument about the move, and takes up room when it is not.

See the count while you decide

Every section of the details sheet reports how many of its entries are on the page, so the total is visible while you edit.

Open the portfolio builder See the 20 designs

Questions

Is four too few: Not if each one has an outcome. Four entries a reader can use beat nine they have to sort through, and the page is judged on the set rather than the count.
What if I have only two: Show two and make both of them properly written up. A short honest page reads as early-career; a padded one reads as something worse.
Should I include old work: Only where it makes an argument the recent work does not. Otherwise the year on the entry is doing damage you did not intend.
Does the page count them for me: Each section of the details sheet carries a counter of how many of its entries are on the page, so the total is visible while you are still deciding.
How many should be case studies: Two. The rest carry a name, a year and one line about what changed, which is how the builder defines a project.

Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.