•A meta-analysis on the association of SWB and academic achievement was conducted.•The correlation between academic achievement and SWB was statistically significant.•Low-achieving students do not necessarily report low well-being.•High-achieving students do not automatically have high well-being. Is the subjective well-being (SWB) of high-achieving students generally higher compared to low achieving students? In this meta-analysis, we investigated the association between SWB and academic achievement by synthesizing 151 effect sizes from 47 studies with a total of 38,946 participants. The correlation between academic achievement and SWB was small to medium in magnitude and statistically significant at r = 0.164, 95% CI 0.113, 0.216. The correlation was stable across various levels of demographic variables, different domains of SWB, and was stable across alternative measures of academic achievement or SWB. Overall, the results suggest that low-achieving students do not necessarily report low well-being, and that high-achieving students do not automatically experience high levels of well-being.