Abstract: In recent years, with the rapid increase of environmental pressure caused by cyanide leaching in the leaching process of gold ore, more and more gold mines began to look for alternatives to cyanide. With the continuous improvement of mineral processing technology, the gold leaching agents to replace sodium cyanide are constantly being introduced. We will introduce research progress of traditional non-cyanide agents and new environment-friendly leaching agents in the leaching process of gold ore from interaction mechanism, characteristics and application. By comparing with the effect of cyanide leaching, it is shown that the tendency of replacing cyanide with non-cyanide agents and environment-friendly leaching agents in gold extraction production was more and more obvious. The future development trend of environmental leaching agent for gold ore was summarized.