Displacement‐based assessment procedures require as input reliable estimates of the deformation capacity of all structural elements. For unreinforced masonry (URM) walls, current design codes specify the in‐plane deformation capacity as empirical equations of interstory drift. National codes differ with regard to the parameters that are considered in these empirical drift capacity equations, but the inhomogeneity of datasets on URM wall tests renders it dif-ficult to validate the hypotheses with the currently available experimental data. This paper contributes to the future development of such empirical relation-ships by investigating the sensitivity of the drift capacity to the shear span, the aspect ratio, the axial load ratio, and the size of the wall. For this purpose, finite element models of URM walls are developed in Abaqus/Explicit and val-idated against a set of experimental results. The results show that the axial load ratio, the shear span, and the wall size are among the factors that influence the drift capacity the most. Empirical equations are mainly derived from test results on small walls, and the numerical results suggest that this can lead to a signif-icant overestimation of the drift capacity for larger walls.