Abstract We study the regulator of the Mordell–Weil group of elliptic curves over number fields, functions fields of characteristic 0 or function fields of characteristic $p>0$. We prove a new Northcott property for the regulator of elliptic curves of rank at least 4 defined over a number field. In the function field case, we obtain that non-trivial families of elliptic curves with bounded regulators and bounded ranks are limited families. We conclude by asking new questions.