Objectives. Experience with anti-TNF agents for a decade can be used to research the safety and effectiveness of anti-TNF agents in the long term. The objective of this article is to describe drug survival, disease activity, daily functioning, quality of life and adverse events of TNF-blocking agents in daily clinical practice after 5 years of follow-up. Methods. Data from the Dutch Rheumatoid Arthritis Monitoring (DREAM) register of 1560 RA patients were used for analyses (5-year follow-up, n = 174). Drug survival and time to first serious infection or malignancy were analysed by Kaplan–Meier analysis. Several outcome measures at several follow-up moments were analysed per intention to treat and per protocol. Results. The 5-year drug survival of the first anti-TNF was 45%, and 60% for total use of TNF-blocking agents. Baseline 28-joint DAS (DAS-28) was 5.1 (<scp>s.d.</scp> 1.3). After 5 years, the mean DAS-28 was 3.2 (<scp>s.d.</scp> 1.3) in all patients who had started with TNF-blocking agents and 2.9 (<scp>s.d.</scp> 1.1) in patients who were still on TNF-blocking agents. In the latter group, the HAQ score was 0.88 (<scp>s.d.</scp> 0.7) and the EuroQol five dimensions (EQ-5D) utility score was 0.7 (<scp>s.d.</scp> 0.2). Incidence rates of serious infections and malignancies were 2.9 and 0.6 per 100 patient-years, respectively. Conclusion. Five-year follow-up of RA patients treated with TNF-blocking agents showed a 60% drug survival accompanied by sustained low disease activity, normalized function and quality of life similar to that in the general population. The benefit to risk ratio for long-term TNF-blocking therapy remains favourable.