Functionally graded materials (FGM) are an advanced class of engineering composites constituting of two or more distinct phase materials described by continuous and smooth varying composition of material properties in the required direction. In this work, the effect of the material homogenization scheme on the flexural response of a thin to moderately thick FGM plate is studied. The plate is subjected to different loading and boundary conditions. The formulation is developed based on the first-order shear deformation theory. The mechanical properties are assumed to vary continuously through the thickness of the plate and obey a power-law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituents. The variation of volume fraction through the thickness is computed using two different homogenization techniques, namely rule of mixtures and Mori–Tanaka scheme. Comparative studies have been carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the present formulation. The results obtained from the two techniques have been compared with the analytical solutions available in the literature. In addition to the above a parametric study bringing out the effect of boundary conditions, loads, and power-law index has also been presented. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.