Abstract Background Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is becoming a major public health problem worldwide. This article reviews the published evidence of prevalence of CKD in population-based study samples that used the standardized definition from the Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative of the National Kidney Foundation (K/DOQI) practice guideline, and particularly focus on performance of serum-creatinine based equations for GFR estimation. We provide a summary of available data about the burden of CKD in various populations. Methods We performed a systematic review of available published data in MEDLINE. A combination of various keywords relevant to CKD was used in this research. Related data of included studies were extracted in a systematic way. Results A total of 26 studies were included in this review. The studies were conducted in different populations, and the number of study participants ranged from 237 to 65181. The median prevalence of CKD was 7.2% in persons aged 30 years or older. In persons aged 64 years or older prevalence of CKD varied from 23.4% to 35.8%. Importantly, the prevalence of CKD strongly depended on which estimating equations were used. The Modification of Diet in Renal Disease Study (MDRD) equation was likely to be preferred in recent epidemiological studies compared to the adjusted Cockcroft-Gault (CG) equation. Conclusion Worldwide, CKD is becoming a common disease in the general population. Accurately detecting CKD in special groups remains inadequate, particularly among elderly persons, females or other ethnic groups such as Asians.