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There is no universal safe plugin count. A site with a few poorly chosen plugins can be harder to maintain than a site with more carefully selected ones. Evaluate purpose, compatibility and actual behaviour instead of aiming at an arbitrary number.
Give every plugin a job
Keep an inventory with the feature each plugin provides, its owner, update status and any subscription or external service it depends on. Identify overlaps, such as several tools generating the same metadata or managing caching in conflicting ways.
Before removing something, check where it is used. A form plugin may power an old landing page; a shortcode may appear in existing articles. Deactivation and deletion have different consequences, including possible data removal.
Measure the relevant impact
Some plugins add work to every public page. Others mainly support an administrator task. Check the pages and functions your customers use, rather than assuming the plugin with the largest settings screen causes the slowdown.
Test a suspected conflict in a private copy where practical. Change one variable at a time and record the outcome. Keep real payment processing and customer emails disabled in the test environment.
Plan a maintainable setup
Prefer tools with a clear purpose and an update path you can support. A free plugin can be suitable; a paid plugin is not automatically better. The important question is whether the business can maintain the feature and recover if an update fails.
For example, if two tools both output canonical tags, simplify that responsibility so the source of the tag is clear. Do not leave both installed merely because each describes itself as an SEO solution.
I can help review dependencies through WordPress support. Describe your symptoms and review my work. Read Why is my WordPress website slow on mobile but fast on desktop? for performance diagnosis and Do I need an SEO plugin for my WordPress website? for one common overlap.
The objective is a site whose features and maintenance responsibilities you understand. A smaller count is useful only when the removal preserves the work the site needs to do.