Objective To analyze the volatile components of fresh Guhong tangerine peel essential oil, evaluate its overall free radical scavenging activity, quickly screen the components with strong free radical scavenging activity without separating individual compounds.Methods Using fresh Guhong tangerine peel as raw material, this study extracts tangerine peel essential oil through water distillation and steam distillation. It analyzes the volatile components of the essential oil extracted by different methods, determines the characteristic volatile components, and screen free radical-scavenging active components by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) combined with a chemical method.Results There are highly significant differences in volatile components, their relative content, characteristic volatile components, and overall free radical scavenging activity between the two extraction methods (P<0.001). Water distillation is the best method for essential oil extraction from fresh Guhong tangerine peel. The free radical scavenging activities of various volatile components are quite different. Citral (86.54%), sinensal (81.2%), and α-farnesene (70.29%) show strong DPPH· scavenging activity, while nerol (95.02%) and sinensal (83.09%) show highly strong ABTS⁺· scavenging activity.Conclusion The volatile components and free radical scavenging activity of essential oil extracted from fresh Guhong tangerine peel are influenced by extraction methods, and there is no direct correlation between the relative content of volatile components and their free radical scavenging activity.