In the last two decades, metal-catalyzed controlled radical polymerization (CRP), or atom transfer radical 5 polymerization (ATRP) has become a ubiquitous tool for the facile synthesis of a wide of materials with specific macromolecular architectures. The complex plays an important role in ATRP, and for this purpose researchers put a great deal of effort on studying the effect of various complexes on polymerization. However, one of disadvantages of copper complex which is the most extensively studied catalyst system in ATRP is the contamination of polymers resulted from a high concentration of stable catalyst. 10 Efficiently and economically removing the catalyst from the resultant polymers will open the way to a wide variety of new functional polymers for specialty applications, especially for large-scale industrial manufacture. Iron-based catalysts have attracted particular attention because of their low toxicity, low cost, abundance, and environmental friendliness, and thus many iron catalysts have been designed for ATRP. This article reviews the preparation of polymers using iron-catalyzed atom transfer radical 15 polymerization, and is organized according to: (a) mechanistic considerations; (b) Iron complexes and ligand types.