Abstract: In the context of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and energy transformation, hydrogen energy has received key attention as a renewable and clean energy with high energy density. At present, hydrogen mainly comes from the combustion of fossil energy and is produced as an industrial by-product. The hydrogen prepared in this production method will be accompanied by the generation of a large amount of carbon dioxide, so it is called "gray hydrogen". In addition, hydrogen produced by splitting water from renewable energy sources such as electric energy and solar energy is called "green hydrogen".Among many hydrogen production methods, hydrogen production from water electrolysis based on renewable energy has the advantages of no carbon emissions and storage of excess electric energy, which is the key direction of future hydrogen energy development research. The water electrolysis process involves two half reactions, namely the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the anode and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at the cathode. In the actual hydrolysis process, it is often necessary to provide a voltage higher than the theoretical voltage (1.23 V, relative to the reversible hydrogen electrode) to make the reaction proceed. Therefore, the choice of electrolysis water catalyst is directly related to electrolysis efficiency and hydrogen production cost. Compared with precious metal catalysts, steel-based catalysts have the advantages of lower raw material cost, abundant reserves, and good stability. After surface modification, their catalytic performance is significantly improved, and they have good adaptability with electrolysis devices. Therefore, the design and preparation of low-cost and high-performance steel-based catalysts are beneficial to the large-scale industrial application of water electrolysis. In this paper, the performance evaluation indexes of water electrolysis catalysts such as overpotential, Tafel slope and stability are introduced first, and then the catalytic mechanism analysis and surface modification methods of steel-based materials as OER and HER catalysts are summarized. The catalytic mechanism of OER includes adsorbate evolution mechanism (AEM) and lattice oxygen evolution mechanism (LOM). Surface modification methods can be divided into increasing the reaction area, enriching active materials and introducing external elements. The use of catalytic mechanisms is emphasized to improve the performance of steel-based catalysts. Then, the catalytic mechanism and main modification methods of steel-based HER catalysts are described, and the research progress of steel-based materials as monofunctional and bifunctional catalysts in total hydrolysis unit is summarized. Finally, the future research trend and development direction of steel-based catalysts for hydrogen production by water electrolysis are put forward.