Evolutionary divergence in cis-regulatory sequences impacts translation initiation sites (TISs). The implication of tandem repeats (TRs) in TIS selection remains elusive for the most part. Here we employed the TIS homology concept to study a possible link between all categories of TRs and TIS selection. Human and 83 other species were selected, and data was extracted on the entire protein-coding genes (n=1,611,368) and transcripts (n=2,730,515) annotated for those species from Ensembl 102. Two different weighing vectors were employed to assign TIS homology, and the results were assessed in 10-fold validation. On average, every TIS was flanked by 1.19 TRs of various categories within the 120 bp upstream sequence. We detected statistically significant excess of non-homologous TISs co-occurring with human-specific TRs, vice versa. We conclude that TRs are abundant cis elements in the upstream sequences of TISs across species, and there is a link between all categories of TRs and TIS selection.