Abstract Background Untargeted metabolomics can be used to expand our understanding of the pathogenesis of sarcopenia. However, the metabolic signatures of sarcopenia patients have not been thoroughly investigated. Herein, we explored metabolites associated with sarcopenia by untargeted gas chromatography (GC)/liquid chromatography (LC)–mass spectrometry (MS) and identified possible diagnostic markers. Methods Forty-eight elderly subjects with sarcopenia were age and sex matched with 48 elderly subjects without sarcopenia. We first used untargeted GC/LC–MS to analyze the plasma of these participants and then combined it with a large number of multivariate statistical analyses to analyze the data. Finally, based on a multidimensional analysis of the metabolites, the most critical metabolites were considered to be biomarkers of sarcopenia. Results According to variable importance in the project (VIP > 1) and the p-value of t-test (p