Many factors have been demonstrated as having an influencing effect on the osteogenic activity of the peptide‐modified bone repair materials. However, most of studies only focus on one or two aspects that result in an incomplete direction for materials preparation, characterization, and performance evaluation. In this review, we reported several factors through summarizing previous research studies, which are mainly centered on three aspects: (1) the characteristics of peptide immobilized on the surface of matrix (e.g., type and length of sequence, structure, and density); (2) the combination mode between peptide and matrix (including covalent binding in selective or nonselective immobilization, and noncovalent binding through simple absorption or mixing with the matrix, and other factors in covalent binding); and (3) the properties of the matrix (including surface structure and morphology, dimension, mechanical properties, hydrophobic–hydrophilic balance, adsorbing proteins on materials), and the other possible influencing factors such as binding to other peptides. In addition, attentions were paid to the introduction and the discussion of newest studies and the analysis of mechanism. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A, 2019.