Water residence time can reveal information of water storage, flow paths and water sources. It could be used to characterize and compare different hydrological systems, and has been widely applied to describe catchment functions. Based on the previous studies on water residence time in runoff processes, this paper systematically reviewed the progress on effects of topography, soil cover and climate on water residence time in catchments, analyzed the applications of isotopic and hydrochemical tracers in the evaluation of residence time, and reviewed the research on lumped parameter models in estimating water residence time. Hydrological tracing and lumped parameter models are effective approaches to estimate water residence time. To strengthen the monitoring of catchment hydrological cycle and systematically study the residence time of runoff components in key zones is an important content and research direction to reveal the response mechanism of hydrological process in the future.