At present, frequent agricultural droughts not only seriously affect regional food security and ecological security, but also threaten social economic stability and sustainable development in the context of global warming. Using remote sensing technology to monitor agricultural drought is an important way to prevent the occurrence and development of agricultural drought, which can provide a strong support for people to develop scientific management measures. Hence, understanding the current progress in studies related to the agricultural drought monitoring based on remote sensing data has importance and practical significance in the quantitative evaluation of agricultural drought and promotion of sustainable social and economic development. In this paper, we first introduced the concepts of the drought and agricultural drought and main research methods. Secondly, we reviewed the progress of research on the agricultural drought monitoring by remote sensing, especially in monitoring indices and its methods. The monitoring indices based on remote sensing were classified into three categories: reflecting rainfall change, reflecting soil moisture change and reflecting crop water balance. Beside this, microwave remote sensing monitoring method, multispectral, near infrared and thermal infrared remote sensing monitoring method and hyperspectral remote sensing monitoring method which are sensitive to moisture change were selected to summarize the advance in monitor agricultural drought research by analyzing the two typical land use types of soil and vegetation. The limitations and applicability of different methods for each category were systematically summarized and described. Thirdly, the existing bottlenecks and difficulties in current research were discussed. Finally, in order to provide a reference for quantitative monitoring and analysis of the agricultural drought, the future research directions were equally proposed.