Surface quality of product plays a vital role to take competitive advantages in present market condition. Surface finish is an important service characteristic of a product, such as corrosion resistance, wears resistance and fatigue life. Burnishing is one of the cost-effective surface finishing processes which is utilized in the aerospace, biomedical and automotive industries to increase the component's reliability and performance. Burnishing produces a very smooth surface finish by pressing a ball or roller against the machined workpiece. In addition, due to the surface plastic deformation caused by the movement of the hardened ball or roller, the mechanical and physical properties such as residual stresses, surface finish, hardness, roundness, diameter reduction, wearing, etc. could also be improved. These positive improvements are dependent on burnishing process parameters such as speed, feed rate, burnishing force, ball diameter, strategy and a number of revolutions, etc. Diverse studies have been focused on the theoretical, numerical and experimental stages of this process in order to analyze and predict the influence of process parameters. The most important purpose of this work is to present the reviewed state of the art of various studies of the burnishing process, providing a general overview of the developing research of the process. The studied materials and the main parameters are discussed, stating the value ranges preferred by different researchers. In addition, other important parameters are discussed such as: kind of tool, geometry of the working piece, design of experiments, kind of lubricant and effect of the process on the surface integrity of the workpiece.