Observational study is necessary for the evaluation of drug effectiveness in clinical practice. In recent years, the use of spontaneous reporting systems (SRS) for adverse drug reactions has increased and they have become an important resource for regulatory science. SRS, being the largest and most well-known databases worldwide, are one of the primary tools used for postmarketing surveillance and pharmacovigilance. To analyze SRS, the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) and the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report Database (JADER) are reviewed. Authorized pharmacovigilance algorithms were used for signal detection, including the reporting odds ratio. An SRS is a passive reporting database and is therefore subject to numerous sources of selection bias, including overreporting, underreporting, and a lack of a denominator. Despite the inherent limitations of spontaneous reporting, SRS databases are a rich resource and data mining index that provide powerful means of identifying potential associations between drugs and their adverse effects. Our results, which are based on the evaluation of SRS databases, provide essential knowledge that could improve our understanding of clinical issues.