Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has emerged as a new vibrational spectrum technology for the single-molecule detection and the imaging of samples. It has a great promise in studying the screening of early cancer for its high sensitivity, good specificity and rapidly noninvasive detection. Recently, the application of SERS in cancer detection has been a new research focus. In this review, we provide a brief introduction to the latest research achievements in tumorous tissues, tumorous cells and blood of cancer patients. Then we give a comprehensive discussion of the difficulties, limitations and applications of these works. The prospect of SERS technology for cancer detection is discussed.