Chinese coastal shellfish resources are abundant with a good prospect of fresh or processed shellfish products. Bioactive peptides from shellfish and its by-products can promote the upgrading of aquaculture development, which belongs to high value utilization of aquatic resources. Antioxidant peptides can suppress and delay lipid oxidation, protect human tissues and organs from damage by the free radicals, therefore this attracted researches in recent years increasingly. The article reviewed methods of preparation of antioxidant peptides from shellfish, including proteolysis, separation, purification and identification. Based on the detection and structural identification methods of antioxidant peptides, the significance and the further clarify of their structures were stressed because that amino acid residues, hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity, acid-basicity, sequence and spatial conformation in the primary structure of antioxidant peptides play important roles on the bioactivity of antioxidant peptides. It was suggested that shellfish antioxidant peptides had potential application in functional food and cosmeceuticals as antioxidant active ingredient.