diff --git a/R/data.table.R b/R/data.table.R
index 113d8bc7d..dfbb86c0f 100644
--- a/R/data.table.R
+++ b/R/data.table.R
@@ -2674,6 +2674,8 @@ chgroup = function(x) {
 }
 
 rbindlist = function(l, use.names="check", fill=FALSE, idcol=NULL) {
+  if (is.null(l)) return(null.data.table())
+  if (class(l)[1L]!="list") stop("Input is ", class(l)[1L]," but should be a plain list of items to be stacked")
   if (isFALSE(idcol)) { idcol = NULL }
   else if (!is.null(idcol)) {
     if (isTRUE(idcol)) idcol = ".id"
diff --git a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
index ea6107383..e7c85a94e 100644
--- a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
+++ b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
@@ -14977,6 +14977,11 @@ DT = data.table(
 test(2054, DT[order(C)[1:5], B, verbose=TRUE], c('b', 'b', 'c', 'c', 'a'),
            output = 'order optimisation is on')
 
+# rbindlist improved error message, #3638
+DT = data.table(a=1)
+test(2059.1, rbindlist(list(DT,1)), error="Item 2 of input is not a data.frame, data.table or list")
+test(2059.2, rbindlist(DT), error="Input is data.table but should be a plain list of items to be stacked")
+
 
 ###################################
 #  Add new tests above this line  #