Abstract: Telomerase is a common type of reverse transcriptase in cells, which plays an important role in maintaining the length of telomeres at the ends of chromosomes. There is always a tight relationship between the growth of tumor cells and the high expression of telomerase activity. Telomerase activity has been a very important biomarker in the field of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, accurate and efficient quantitative analysis of telomerase activity is one of the key points in the field of analytical science, clinical medicine and other related disciplines. A series of novel telomerase activity detection methods with very good analytical performance have been proposed with the development of analysis and testing technology. This article summarizes telomerase activity detection scheme in the recent five years and we also forecast the future development direction of telomerase activity detection.