Abstract Backgrounds Although Blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine concentration (Cr) has been widely measured in daily clinical practice, BUN-to-Cr ratio (BCR) for prognosis among patients admitted with cardiogenic shock (CS) remains unknown. The present study was conducted to assess the prognostic effectiveness of BCR on CS. Methods and results Records of data for patients with CS were extracted from public database of the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III (MIMIC-III). The primarily endpoint was in-hospital mortality. We incorporated multivariate Cox regression model and Kaplan–Meier curve to evaluate the relationship between BCR and in-hospital mortality, adjusting for potential confounders. Data of 1137 patients with CS were employed for the final cohort, with 556 in the low BCR (