With the deep integration of digital technology and the financial system, digital inclusive finance has progressively emerged as a significant research domain attracting attention from both academia and policymakers. Its research themes and methodologies exhibit distinct evolutionary characteristics. Thus, to systematically trace the overall trajectory, core focal points, and cutting-edge trends within digital inclusive finance research, this study examines 699 publications indexed in the Web of Science database from 2018 to 2025. Employing CiteSpace software, it conducts a visual analysis of the field’s knowledge structure and research evolution across multiple dimensions. This includes publication trends, author and institutional collaboration, keyword co-occurrence, clustering, timeline analysis, and emergence analysis. Correspondingly, findings indicate that digital inclusive finance research has established a multifaceted thematic framework centered on economic growth, income distribution, rural development, green transition, and technological innovation. Moreover, research priorities align closely with national development strategies and policy orientations, with content evolving from early conceptual explorations towards deeper mechanism analysis and applied studies. Overall, the field demonstrates a developmental trajectory that expands from macro-level impact analysis to micro-level mechanism and heterogeneity research. Concurrently, existing research exhibits shortcomings, including insufficient international comparisons, limited attention to micro-level individual variations, and relatively weak assessments of long-term effects and potential risks. Therefore, future studies may further integrate multi-level data and multi-method frameworks to deepen explorations of digital inclusive finance’s operational mechanisms, risk governance, and regionally differentiated applications. This ultimately advances the synergistic development of theoretical research and practical implementation in this field.