Abstract Background Type 2 diabetes mellitus is common in patients undergoing dialysis. However, the association between anti-diabetic drug use and survival outcomes is rarely discussed. We aimed to investigate whether continued anti-diabetic medication use affects the survival of diabetic dialysis patients and whether different hypoglycemic drug use influences prognosis. Methods Using a nationwide database, we enrolled patients with incident end-stage renal disease under maintenance dialysis during 2011–2015 into the pre-existing diabetes dialysis (PDD), incident diabetes after dialysis (IDD), and non-diabetic dialysis (NDD) groups. The PDD group was further subclassified into patients who continued (PDD-M) and discontinued (PDD-NM) anti-diabetic drug use after dialysis. Results A total of 5249 dialysis patients were examined. The PDD-NM group displayed a significantly higher mortality rate than the IDD, PDD-M, and NDD groups (log-rank test P