Abstract The steel-concrete bond is a fundamental property in reinforced concrete structures. Although there are several studies on the steel-concrete bond, few of them have evaluated the performance of reinforcing bars with diameters less than 10.0 mm, which includes 5.0, 6.3, and 8.0 mm diameters, which are normally used in reinforced-concrete elements. This study experimentally evaluates the bond between thin steel bars and concrete of 25MPa compression strength. Three types of methods of testing the bond-strength were performed: confined bar test, pull-out test and beam test. It was compared the adequacy of the tests to calculate the conformation coefficient of the bars. The results of the confined bars tests show that this test may be inadequate to determine the surface conformation coefficient of reinforcing bars thinner than 10 mm, especially for notched (CA-60) steel bars. The pull-out test resulted in better results in terms of evaluating the bond behavior. Regarding the specimens for the pull-out tests, a modified model with an anchorage length equal to 10 times the bar diameter is suggested. Therefore, the main contribution of this study, based on the results obtained and the methodology used, is to present a proposal for the evaluation of steel-concrete bond for thin rebars.