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The Cyclophyllidea is the most diverse order of tapeworms, encompassing species that infect all classes of terrestrial tetrapods including humans and domesticated animals. Available phylogenetic reconstructions based either on morphology or molecular data lack the resolution to allow scientists to either propose a solid taxonomy or infer evolutionary associations. Molecular markers available for the Cyclophyllidea mostly include ribosomalDNAand mitochondrial loci. In this study, we identified 3641 single‐copy nuclear coding loci by comparing the genomes ofHymenolepis microstoma,Echinococcus granulosusandTaenia solium. We designedRNAbaits based on the sequence ofH. microstoma, and applied target enrichment and Illumina sequencing to test the utility of those baits to recover loci useful for phylogenetic analyses. We capturedDNAfrom five species of tapeworms representing two families of cyclophyllideans. We obtained an average of 3284 (90%) of the targets from the test samples and then used captured sequences (2 181 361 bp in total; fragment size ranging from 301 to 6969 bp) to reconstruct a phylogeny for the five test species plus the three species for which genomic data are available. The results were consistent with the current consensus regarding cyclophyllidean relationships. To assess the potential for our method to yield informative genetic variation at intraspecific scales, we extracted 14 074 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from alignments of fourArostrilepis macrocirrosaand twoA. cookiand successfully inferred their relationships. The results showed that our target gene tools yield data sets that provide robust inferences at a range of taxonomic scales in the Cyclophyllidea.