The current development status and application trend of large-scale scrap steel gantry shears are introduced at home and abroad. By comparing the research status at home and abroad, the deficiencies of China’s gantry shears research was analyzed. The current status of domestic and foreign research on cutting machine in “hydraulic synchronization”, “cutting frequency”, “energy saving”, “hydraulic system buffering”, “hydraulic high flow” and “hydraulic system control” were introduced, for the future research of gantry shears, which provided corresponding reference. In the future, there will be a large amount of scrap steel need to be processed in China, so gantry shears will be widely used, especially high-pressure large-flow gantry shears will be an inevitable choice for processing scrap steel.