Abstract: Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer in nature, with many advantages like broad resource of raw material, large specific surface area, abundant hydroxyl groups and environmentally friendly. Besides, cellulose can form three-dimensional network structure in aqueous suspension, which provides loading sites for metal nanoparticles to make them disperse well and binds well with cellulose and prepares the composite catalysts with improved catalytic performance. Herein, the preparation and application of cellulose-based composite catalysts with metal nanoparticles were summarized, the methods and merits of the composite catalysts with various cellulosic materials were highlighted. Furthermore, the loading methods and principles of metal nanoparticles were generalized, and the main functions of cellulosic materials in composite catalysts were elaborated. Finally, the researches of cellulose-based composite catalysts with metal nanoparticle were summarized. This work can be a reference for the preparing and applying of cellulosic composite catalysts.