With the rapid development of computer vision technology and the wide use of cameras, vision-based positioning has become a new research hot spot. Higher accuracy, lower cost, wider range of applications and some other advantages make vision-based positioning technology more promising than traditional positioning methods. This paper gives a briefly introduction of different methods of positioning firstly. Then we discuss different technologies of vision-based positioning techniques and their core algorithms. In addition, we compared the advantages and disadvantages of different algorithms. Finally, we investigate different applications of vision-based positioning and analyze the existing problems and possible development trends.