This paper studies a Cauchy problems for fifth-order shallow water equations with nonlinear terms in (1). With data in analytic Gevrey spaces on the line, we prove that the problem is well defined. We also treat the regularity in time which belongs to $$G^{5\sigma }$$ near zero for every x on the line. The proof is based mainly on bilinear and trilinear estimates in the analytic Gevrey–Bourgain spaces, relies on the contraction mapping theorem to improve the results in Jia and Huo (J Differ Equ 246:2448–2467, 2009).