through collecting and sorting out the relevant researches on breakwater overtopping in recent years，this paper summarizes the influence of overtopping factors，the deduction and demonstration of overtopping calculation formula，overtopping numerical simulation and overtopping standard. The existing results show that：most of the factors of overtopping are focused on the study of conventional factors，including wave height period，dike top elevation，slope shoulder width and armor block，while the study of other factors such as flow，wind speed，wave spectrum and water properties is relatively less；the study of overtopping calculation formula mainly focuses on three aspects：the factors affecting overtopping，the comparison and selection of overtopping formula，and the derivation of formula. In the aspect of numerical simulation，RANS equation and RNG model are mostly used Based on k-ε turbulence model and VOF method，fluent and other mature softwares are used to simulate the overtopping process or predict the overtopping amount. Machine learning algorithms such as neural network are more and more used in the numerical simulation of overtopping amount. With the deepening of the above research，the overtopping standard has gradually improved，and the applicability has been strengthened to a certain extent.