I could not find a way to make this work directly when preloading :followers or :followees but I found a way by interacting directly with :follower_connections and :followee_connections. defmodule MyApp.Connection do ... def latest(n) do Ecto.Query.from(u in MyApp.Connection, order_by: [desc: :inserted_at], limit: ^n) end end With two users with ids 1 and 2, and a follower/followee connection betw