The drug discovery landscape has been transformed over the past decade by the discovery of allosteric modulators of all major mammalian receptor superfamilies. Allosteric ligands are a rich potential source of drugs and drug targets with clear therapeutic advantages. G protein-coupled receptors, ligand-gated ion channels and intracellular nuclear hormone receptors have all been targeted by allosteric modulators. More recently, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) has been targeted by an extracellular small-molecule allosteric modulator. Allosteric mechanisms of structurally distinct molecules that target the various receptor families are more alike than originally anticipated and include selectivity, orthosteric probe dependence and pathway-biased signaling.