The analysis of carbohydrate structure and composition plays a vital role in the study of structure-activity relationship of carbohydrates.Hydrophilic interaction chromatography(HILIC) could be used to separate polar compounds like carbohydrates with satisfactory resolution.The stationary phase and retention mechanism of HILIC column commonly used in carbohydrates analysis were introduced.The effects of strong elution solvent ratio,mobile phase pH value,buffer salt concentration and column temperature on separation were also discussed.Application examples in analysis of monosaccharide composition,disaccharide composition of glycosaminoglycans,polymerization degree of oligosaccharides,glycosides,glycolipids,sugar alcohols and N-/O-glycans by HILIC were illustrated in this paper.