Photothermal ablation therapy (PAT) is a minimally invasive therapeutic method for tumor elimination with little harm to normal tissues and organs, showing many advantages compared with conventional methods widely used today. Thus, PAT has attracted increasing interest and has been widely studied. Effective PAT relies heavily on low-toxicity, low-cost, biocompatible, and highly efficient photothermal agents. At present, there are mainly four basic classes, including organic and polymer-based, metal-based, carbon-based, and semiconductorbased photothermal agents. Based on these four basic classes, several types of multifunctional photothermal agents have received much attention, such as imaging-guided photothermal agents, photothermal-chemo synergistic agents, and photothermal-photodynamic synergistic agents. In this review, we focus on the classic research samples and the most recent progress to make an introduction to photothermal therapy. Meanwhile, the limitations as well as some perspective also will be discussed.