Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the serious complications of diabetes, and its complex pathogenesis has not been completely clarified yet.Metabolic changes are closely related to phenotypes and metabolomics analysis can indicate the biochemical status of cells, tissues or organs.With the renewal of metabolomics technology and the improvement of detection sensitivity, more differential metabolites have been detected.Therefore, metabolomics has gradually become a powerful tool to explore the pathogenesis of DR and the therapeutic potential of drugs for DR.Metabolomics study in DR is still in its infancy, which mainly takes vitreous humor, aqueous humor and plasma as samples with the pentose phosphate pathway, arginine and proline pathway and ascorbic acidic pathway as main research pathways.Further research is necessary to explore the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of DR, and to determine its longitudinal association with the disease.Metabolomics studies related to the animal model of DR and the vitreous humor, aqueous humor and plasma of DR patients were reviewed in this article.