OBJECTIVES: Patients and their caregivers bear a significant burden of the economic cost of cancer. However, there is limited information regarding the cost burden from their perspective. We characterized cost-of-illness (COI) studies that adopt the patient/caregiver perspective.  METHODS: We utilized data from a published COI review that includes studies from 2005 to 2014. We focused on studies that reported COI related to cancer. We compared studies conducted from the patient/caregiver perspective (G1) against those conducted from other perspectives (e.g., private or public payer (G2). We compared G1 and G2 in terms of the focus on high impact cancers (HIC), type of cost, data source and funding source. We defined HIC as the three most common cancers and the three leading causes of cancer death: prostate; lung; colorectal; liver; stomach and breast cancers. RESULTS: CONCLUSIONS: The majority of COI studies in the cancer setting did not adopt the patient/caregiver’s perspective and were conducted in North America. Future research should investigate COI to the patients outside North America to enrich our understanding of the economic burden of cancer.