Abstract Assessing the effectiveness of climate adaptation action is the focus of intense debate across scientific and policy arenas. Measurement is essential for effective adaptation management and operation, and indicators and metrics (I&M) have a pivotal role. Surprisingly, there are very few systematic efforts to understand the advances in the provisioning of adaptation I&M. Here we analyse 137 publications and 901 I&M sourced in the scientific literature to measure adaptation to climate change, particularly, in urban areas where governments are increasingly placing efforts to prepare populations and infrastructures. A lack of common terminology, standardisation, and reference guidelines has resulted in a field that is complex to track and understand. Furthermore, such complexity has led to diverse, context-specific and sometimes competing approaches to developing I&M. We argue that current I&M proposals are highly technical, not sufficiently grounded on real needs, and have little potential to collectively support effective urban climate change adaptation.