OBJECTIVES: Age-related dementia is a progressive degenerative brain syndrome whose prevalence increases with age. Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson disease (PD), Vascular Dementia (VD) are the most common age-related dementias. Dementias cause a substantial burden on society and on families who provide informal care. This study aims to review the relevant papers to compare informal care time and costs in different age-related dementias. METHODS: A systematic bibliographic search was performed on an international medical literature database (MEDLINE). All studies which assessed the social economic burden of different dementias were selected. Informal care time and costs were analyzed by disease stages and in three care settings, at home, in institution and without care setting distinction. RESULTS: 21 studies met our criteria. Depending on studies, informal costs vary from $1,364 to $44,736 in AD patients at home and from $1,563 to $5,386 in PD patients at home. Informal care time vary from 11,59h to 139,30h per week for AD patient at home and from 10,00h to 22,00h per week for PD patients at home. For informal care time and costs in institution only papers on AD were available. The annual informal costs vary from $416 to $5,542 and informal care time varies from 3.02h to 17.25h per week. For patients without distinction of care setting, annual informal costs varies from $1,831to $11,251 for AD and informal care time from 12,29h to 66,55h per week. Mean informal care time per week for patient at home was 55.73 h in AD and 15.8 h in PD ( p=0.0076) and the associated mean annual informal costs were $17,492 versus $3,284, respectively ( p=0.0393). CONCLUSIONS: There is a lack of data about informal care time and costs among other dementias than AD or PD. Globally, AD is most costly in terms of informal care costs than PD.