Abstract : <p>Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic disorders sharing the common underlying feature of hyperglycemia. In developed countries, use of medicinal plants has recently increased as scientific evidence about their effectiveness has become broadly available. This article is to review the efficacy and safety of medicinal plants commonly used for diabetes mellitus. We carried out a literature search in several electronic data bases such as: Pubmed, Pubmed Central, Google, Google Scholar, Scopus and Medline from 2000 to 2020 to acquire the status of information concerning this concept. Medicinal plants have long been used in traditional systems of medicine for diabetes. Some recent reports on the medicinal plant with anti-diabetic effects have provided evidence for possible mechanisms of action. Nonetheless, the majority of investigators only speculated on a wide range of possible mechanisms or simply demonstrated an antihyperglycemic effect for the crude plant extracts or the isolated compounds of interest. This review articles hope that this will be beneficial as a starting point to consider the discussed products for further investigations to identify and develop new medicinal remedies with potential alternative or complementary use in con- trolling diabetes.</p>