Design-based learning (DBL) offers opportunities to support students' content understanding. Previous DBL studies reported different effect sizes by using the data from one participant group. The goal of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis that would give a comprehensive picture of how DBL is connected to student achievement in different disciplines. In addition, we explored the moderators influencing achievement in DBL for K-12 education. After investigating content-related gains in our meta-analysis on 37 individual articles with 52 effect sizes, we found that DBL had a positive and large effect (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.602) on achievement in K-12 education, and the effect size for science (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.703) was higher than mathematics (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.418) education. When considering the strong emphasis on science education in different DBL related frameworks and STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) education studies, this cumulative understanding could play an important role in the difference between science and mathematics. Studies that had control groups in the same school (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.703) had statistically significantly higher effect sizes compared to studies that included control groups from different schools (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.447). Studies with random assignment (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.258) had statistically significantly smaller effect sizes compared to studies with non-random assignment (g over bar $$ \overline{g} $$ = 0.623). In addition, the effect of DBL on achievement showed statistically significant differences among different countries. The remaining moderators (school level, content support, measurement type, and experimental design) did not show statistically significant differences in terms of the effect of DBL on student achievement. Our review presents evidence that participating in DBL activities supports student achievement after the intervention, but how students transfer their content gains in other situations needs convincing evidence. To overcome this challenge, future studies can prioritize how to support achievement in state mandated tests to understand DBL's effect on students' content gains in different learning situations.