Ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials are very important functional materials and have many important applications in the national economy, high technology and defense industry. As lead-based ferroelectric materials are of type rich, excellent performance, low cost and other advantages, they are widely used. With the development of green sustainable society, the harm of lead-based materials on human and environment are realized more and more, and the environmentally friendly lead-free piezoelectric materials have become the important research direction. There are two types of lead-free piezoelectric materials are concerned about in this paper. (1) BaTiO3(BT)、Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3(BNT) and (K,Na)NbO3(KNN) lead-free piezoelectric materials, which have been studied extensively because of their morphotropic phase boundary ( MPB ) or polymorphic phase boundaries (PPB) structures, near which the materials exhibit excellent piezoelectric properties. (2) Bismuth layer structure and tungsten bronze lead-free piezoelectric materials, which present high Curie temperature and obvious anisotropy. Based on the literatures of lead-free piezoelectric materials, this paper summarizes the recent advances in component design, phase boundary construction and performance control, and material preparation. And discusses and the effect of ion or compound doping modification and the preparation process on the properties of the material. It also analyzes the challenges in the preparation of the lead-free piezoelectric single crystal and the benefits of the space growth of the complex solid-state single crystal growth. On this basis, we suggest the future development tendency of lead-free piezoelectric materials.