Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the malignant tumors with high morbidity and mortality,which has some problems,such as high postoperative recurrence rate,easy metastasis,multidrug resistance,low immunity,poor prognosis and so on.Currently,there is a lack of effective treatment,so it is extremely urgent to look for new drugs for anti-hepatocellular carcinoma with safety,high efficiency and low toxicity.Natural products are rich in many kinds of active components,such as polysaccharides, flavonoids,saponins, alkaloids,etc., which have the advantages of giving priority to killing or inhibiting cancer cells,less toxic and side effects,not easy to produce drug resistance,enhance immunity,and have the characteristics of multi-target and link effect.It is an important resource bank for exploring new anti-tumor drugs.At present,extracting active components from natural products and exploring their anti-liver cancer mechanism is an important way and research focus to screen therapeutic drugs and targets for hepatocellular carcinoma.The article will review the mechanism of the inhibitory effect of activecomponents of natural products on the proliferation of liver cancer cells,and reveal the pathway of inducing apoptosis of liver cancer cells,in order to provide a theoretical basis for the research and development and utilization of anti-liver cancer drugs.