The magnificent features of flexible plate structure, including lightweight and high-speed response, resulted in additional market demand, especially in the automotive and manufacturing industries. Nevertheless, the structure may incur structural damage and performance degradation when the system encounters excessive vibration. Therefore, a system identification approach utilising a metaheuristic algorithm via crow search to develop a horizontal flexible plate (HFP) model for vibration control is introduced in this paper. Crow search (CS) is a modern algorithm inspired by a crow’s intellectual operation to store additional food and memorise the food storage location. In this study, CS is employed to optimise the objective function, which is the mean squared error for accomplishing a precise predicted model in replicating the dynamic response of the actual structure. Hence, the preliminary action for modelling using this approach is designing and fabricating an HFP rig for experimentally gathering the real input-output vibration data. After that, the mathematical modelling utilising the CS algorithm was implemented using a parametric model structure. Finally, the best-fit model is chosen for the representation of the HFP based on the lowest mean squared error, correlation test within a 95% confidence level and stability in a pole-zero plot. The simulation result reveals that the CS algorithm with a second-order estimated model accomplished a minimum MSE of 1.1168 × 10-5, an unbiased correlation test and excellent stability for the HFP structure.