Background Shearwave elastography ultrasound (SWE) has been increasing used in the recent decade to quantify tissue stiffness and viscoelastic properties correlate to a disease condition. Aims This study aimed to develop a low cost and reproducible gelatine phantom to verify the accuracy of tissue elasticity measurement using shear wave elastography (SWE). The effect of lesion’s size, stiffness and depth from the surface on the tissue elasticity measurement were also investigated. Methods A breast tissue-equivalent phantom embedded with spherical inclusions of different sizes, stiffness and depth from surface was constructed using gelatine. The elasticity of the spherical inclusions was determined using a commercial SWE system and compared to the elasticity determined using a high precision electromechanical microtester (gold standard for elasticity measurements). Results Statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was found between the elasticity measured using SWE and electromechanical microtester, whereby the SWE overestimated the tissue elasticity by a mean value of 22.8 ± 15.0 kPa. The size and depth of the spherical inclusions have not imposed any effect on the elasticity measured by SWE, but the depth of shear wave detection was found limited to 8 cm from the surface. Conclusion The gelatine phantom constructed in this study could be used to verify the accuracy of the elasticity measured using SWE. The tissue elasticity measured by the SWE appeared to be overestimated compared to the gold standard. Further research would need to be carried out to determine the offset from the SWE measurement and to account for these differences.