• Chemical shift of 119 Sn depends significantly on the coordination number. • Electronic environment around tin atom and this leads to the shift in the peaks. • Coordinating and non-coordinating solvent has impact on the 119 Sn NMR chemical shifts. • 119 Sn NMR spectrum is sensitive to the form of atom coordinated with tin. Organotin chemistry is among the intensively researched fields of organometallic chemistry as the tin nucleus can be studied by various sophisticated characterization techniques. Among all spectral characterization techniques, the use of 119 Sn NMR has contributed a lot to the advancement of tin chemistry and describes the coordination environment around tin centre. This technique has helped in the growth of organotin chemistry to a large extent and preparations, structural characterization and applications of organotin compounds have been extensively exploited. This review describes the tin NMR studies of tetra, penta and hexa coordinated organotin complexes. The chemical shift value of 119 Sn NMR is affected by the coordination number surrounding the element tin. Increasing coordination number increases electron density on the tin centre, which causes the resonance signals to move upfield and the resonance signals to move downfield, respectively.