A bibliometric analysis reviewed 1,908 articles on acupuncture randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases. The number of publications has steadily increased from 59 articles in 2010 to a maximum of 205 in 2022. The United States (263 articles) and South Korea (216 articles) contributed the most. Leading institutions included Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (166 articles, 2,084 citations) and Kyung Hee University (112 articles). The most prolific researchers were Liu Zhishun and Liu Cunzhi, the most frequent keywords included "Acupuncture" (1,188 times), "Randomized controlled trial" (439 times), "Electroacupuncture" (409 times), "Management" (291 times) and "Pain" (277 times). Recent keywords were "instructions", "sleep" and "diagnosis" (2021-2022). The main journals were Studies (274 articles) and Acupuncture in Medicine (H-index 26, 2,099 citations). The study suggests future directions: identifying appropriate conditions for acupuncture, investigating efficacy factors, and improving research quality through rigorous methodological design.