A total of 26 different cyclodextrin (CD) derivatives with different functional groups and degrees of substitution were tested against 35 basic pharmaceutical compounds in an effort to investigate their effectiveness as chiral selectors for enantiomeric separation in capillary electrophoresis (CE). Testing was performed under the same conditions using a low pH buffer (25 mM phosphate buffer at pH approximately 2.5). Five CD derivatives, namely, highly sulfated-beta-CD, highly sulfated-beta-CD, hydroxypropyl-beta-CD (degree of substitution approximately 1), heptakis-(2,6-O-dimethyl)-beta-CD, and heptakis(2,3,6-O-trimethyl)-beta-CD were identified to be most effective for enantiomeric separations and have a wide range of enantiomeric selectivity towards the model compounds. Over 90% of the model compounds were enantiomerically resolved with the five identified CD derivatives, at a minimum resolution of 0.5. An additional 20 compounds were also tested to demonstrate the validity of the identified CD derivatives. The five CD derivatives were recommended as the starting chiral selectors in developing enantiomeric separation methods by CE.