Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common disease in clinical practice, and its incidence is increasing yearly along with a high mortality rate. Therefore, establishment of reliable, stable and reproducible AKI models is the basis to study kidney diseases. AKI modeling method are diverse in accordance with different experimental purposes. In this review, we describe the approaches to establish AKI models, namely drugs, unilateral ureteral obstruction, ischemiareperfusion, 5 / 6 nephrectomy, and infection. The purpose of this review is to discuss and summarize the current status and method to establish various AKI models, and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the induction method and their corresponding clinical signs in terms of their pathological mechanisms. This review provides a foundation for standardization of AKI animal models and the theoretical principles and experimental basis for in vivo studies of kidney diseases.