Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have limited storage capacity, communication bandwidth, processing speed, and battery issues. All these factors affect the lifespan of a WSN. Solving all these issues and increasing the lifespan of the WSN. Energy optimization in WSNs is a demanding issue that drives a huge effort in research and various standardization procedures have been undertaken in this area for the past several years. To deal with the reduction of energy consumption issues in WSNs, various clustering protocols have evolved. In this context, some protocols select an appropriate node as the cluster head to extend the lifespan of the network and also clustering reviewed techniques. In this paper, different fuzzy-based clustering methods are discussed which is helpful in designing novel energy-efficient fuzzy-based routing protocols for WSN. The main purpose of this article is to review different types of routing protocols with their advantages and limitations. In addition, various protocols have been compared graphically with their lifetimes. Various tables are depicted which are helpful for extended studies, graphical comparison between the latest clustering techniques shows the most suitable clustering technique for improving network lifetime.