Plants are an important source of active principles that can be used to treat many diseases, including diabetes. The objective of our study was to identify the plants used in traditional Algerian medicine to treat diabetes. An ethnobotanical survey conducted in 14 regions of eastern Algeria during the period from September 1, 2010 to August 31, 2014 among 1500 diabetics has inventoried 85 species belonging to 37 botanical families, the majority of plants are Lamiaceae (12, 74%) followed by Asteraceae and Apiaceae with a rate of 7, 69% for each group then Rosaceae (6, 59%).Algeria has an important floristic biodiversity in medicinal plants, more precisely the species used in the treatment of diabetes. These results constitute a good basis for biological screening in the search for active molecules based on plants.