Abstract Owing to the hydrophobic inner cavity and hydrophilic exterior of cyclodextrins (CDs), CDs molecules could exhibit excellent properties in water solubility, molecular recognition and enrichment capability, and CDs-based materials attracted considerable attentions in electrochemical sensing. This review shows the unique advantages and detecting mechanism of electrochemical sensors based on CDs functionalized materials, and recent advances for CDs-based materials (including CDs/carbon nanotubes, CDs/graphene, CDs/conducting polymers and other CDs-based nanomaterials) in electrochemical sensing. Finally, we also discussed some critical challenges and prospects in this field.