We report a systematic numerical investigation of the creeping flow of three different viscoelastic models, the UCM, Oldroyd-B and the linear form of the PTT model, through a 1:3 planar sudden expansion. Although the effect of elasticity is to reduce both the length and intensity of the recirculation region downstream of the expansion, we show that this reduction is much lower than previous studies have suggested and that, at high Deborah number, a significant region of recirculation still exists for all of the models studied. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.