Herbivory limits success of vegetation restoration globally. Restoring vegetation in degraded ecosystems is an increasingly common practice for promoting biodiversity and ecological function, but successful implementation is hampered by an incomplete understanding of the processes limiting restoration success. By assembling terrestrial and aquatic studies globally (2594 experimental tests from 610 articles), we reveal substantial herbivore control of vegetation under restoration. Herbivores at restoration sites reduced vegetation abundance more strongly (by 89%, on average) than at relatively undegraded sites, and suppressed, rather than fostered, plant diversity. These effects were particularly pronounced in regions with higher temperatures and lower precipitation. Temporally excluding targeted herbivores or introducing their predators improved restoration by magnitudes similar to or greater than managing plant competition or facilitation. Thus, managing herbivory is a promising strategy for enhancing vegetation restoration efforts. This ZIP file contains the following datasets and code for the above paper: 1) Xu_ConsumerEffects.xlsx This file contains the Global Consumer Effects dataset (and several subsets) 2) Xu_PlantInteractions.xlsx This file contains the Global Plant Interactions and Restoration dataset 3) Code_Xu_Restoration_Ms.R This file contains examples of main R code used. See the Supplementary Materials of the paper for methods used to collect and analyze these data.