The change in industrialisation and the increase in usage of automobile divesting the natural reserves of the fossil fuels which has driven the world towards alternative fuels especially renewable sources. One of the most prominent replaceable alternatives to the diesel is biodiesel. The research on usage of this biodiesel and modification of engines to suit these biodiesels started during the period of World War-II and the change in environmental conditions and decreasing reserves of the existing petroleum reserves formed as catalyst to accelerate this research to find better alternative biodiesel. Wide research is being done on many of the alternative biodiesels. This work mainly focuses on review of performance, emission and combustion characteristics of five most prominent biodiesels namely Jatropha, Cotton seed oil, Rubber seed oil, Mahua oil and Rapeseed oil. It is found that the brake specific fuel consumption is high for all the biodiesels because of less energy content in them in comparison with diesel. The variation of brake thermal efficiency depends on the percentage of fuel combustion and the percentage of blends used. From the review it was observed that. Even though the report of emission characteristics shows that the emissions of HC, smoke and CO by Rapeseed oil is little more comparative to that of other biodiesel blends but the performance of Rapeseed oil is superior and almost similar to that of diesel when compared with other biodiesel blends. Hence forth Rapeseed oil can be suggested as better alternative biodiesel to the diesel with certain modifications like Al 2 O 3 coatings to the piston which controls CO and HC emissions.