Malnutrition is a common geriatric syndrome, perceived as an independent risk factor for poor prognosis of various diseases in the elderly. Currently, no gold standard is available for malnutrition screening specifically for them. Existing nutritional screening tools have a wide range of applications, and subjective and objective indicators of evaluation are different. Although they increase the convenience of use, the sensitivity and specificity of different assessment methods vary. The results obtained by different methods for the same target population may be different. This article reviews the common tools for malnutrition screening and assessing in the elderly.