Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been described as bone marrow stromal cells, which can form cartilage, bone or hematopoietic supportive stroma. In 2006 the International Society for Cell Therapy (ISCT) established a set of minimal characteristics to define MSCs because of their wide potential use in biomedical disciplines. According to their criteria these cells must express CD73, CD90 and CD105 surface markers; however, it is now known they do not represent true stemness proteins. Moreover, nowadays, 2,871 articles in the literature are associated with MSCs. Therefore, there is a need to establish from the literature which cell surface epitopes have been used. The objective of the present work was to determine the surface markers for MSCs associated with skeletal tissue. To this end we performed a scoping review for human MSCs in axial and appendicular skeleton. The following databases were searched: Pubmed (462 articles), Scopus (1,749) and Web of Science (660), for a total of 2,871 articles; based on exclusion criteria 94.7% were not considered. Our findings determined the most widely used markers were those proposed by the ISCT for studies performed in vitro CD105 (82.9%), CD90 (75.0%) and CD73 (51.9%), followed by CD44 (42.1%), CD166 (30.9%), CD29 (27.6%) and STRO-1 (17.7%) in bone marrow, cartilage and periosteum. On the other hand, only 4% of the articles evaluated in situ cell surface markers, suggesting a need to further investigations in situ cell surface proteins, as their isolation procedure can change their expression. Even though most studies use the ISCT 2006 criteria, most publications in adult tissues don’t evaluate the characteristics that establish a stem cell (self-renewal and differentiation), which will be necessary to distinguish between a stem cell and progenitor populations. Collectively, MSCs require further understanding of their characteristics if they are intended for clinical use.