Currently, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) surveillance mainly relies on sentinel surveillance and the HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) case reporting system to calculate the HIV infection rate, the number of newly reported HIV cases, and the HIV-related mortality rate, while theses measures are not able to directly estimate the HIV incidence. National-level research is conducted to investigate the characteristics of drug-resistant strains of HIV. HIV infection has the characteristics of a covert progression and a long-term latent phase, making it difficult to identify individuals in the acute infection stage. Conventional monitoring method struggles to determine the infection time of individuals, thereby introducing potential biases in the estimation of the incidence and impacting the comprehensive exploration of disease risk factors and the assessment of intervention measures. Recently, test for recent infection (TRI), as one of AIDS epidemic surveillance and intervention assessment measures, has become a vital way to estimate HIV incidence by testing the cross-sectional specimens. TRI can identify recent HIV infection and long-term HIV infection, consisting of serological and molecular method. Serological assays have been widely used because of their low cost, high accuracy of HIV infection incidence estimate and long development history, and their accuracy and simplicity have achieved significant progress in recent years. According to introduct the principle, accuracy and application of TRI, this paper reviews the latest progress, advantages, and limitations of TRI.