The demand for groundwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions has increased due to their progressive use in agriculture, industry and domestic activities. Among the difficulties and uncertainties that arise when managing groundwater resources is the calculation of groundwater withdrawals (GWW). The objective of this research work is to review the existing literature on the methods developed to estimate GWW by providing a summary of the advances, limitations and opportunities that the different methods developed on this topic could offer by identifying, categorizing and synthesizing the studies with a focus on developing a systematic guide so that researchers and practitioners conducting GWW studies can be informed of the most popular techniques, and the authors’ experiences in recent years. Therefore, a literature search was conducted in the EEE, Google Scholar, SCOPUS, SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis Group and Wiley-Blackwell databases, using the following keywords: Groundwater AND (Withdrawal OR Pumping OR Abstraction) AND (Prediction OR Estimation). Thirty-four journal articles published between 1970 and 2021 were chosen based on the selection criteria, characteristics and capabilities of the approaches used for evaluation in GWW extraction. We concluded that the different methods for groundwater pumping estimation that have been reviewed in this work have advantages and disadvantages in their application. Direct approaches are very old and are still working uncertainty in their application is presented with possible human errors or in the measurement system. On the other hand, indirect methods have evolved along with technological advances, which have brought significant improvements and accuracy to these approaches.