Abstract: As a derivative of graphene, graphene oxide (GO) has excellent comprehensive performance, showing great application potential in metal corrosion and protection. Graphene oxide has not only a two-dimensional layered structure but also contains hydroxyl, carbonyl, carboxyl, epoxy groups and other functional groups that can be used as active sites with other substances for covalent/non-covalent functionalization modification, so graphene oxide is often used as a filler to enhance the comprehensive performance of coatings. This paper reviews the recent research progress on graphene oxide composite coating in metal corrosion and protection. The first part summarizes the morphology of metal corrosion and the corrosion protection methods, explains the primary forms of metal corrosion, and discusses the current main metal corrosion protection methods. The second part introduces the physicochemical properties of graphene and its derivatives. In this paper, graphene oxide (GO) is the main focus. It has tremendous application potential in metal corrosion protective coatings due to its sheet structure, excellent dispersion, and abundant oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface, which are the active point of the reaction and easy modification. The third part introduces the current GO composite coating, which compares the corrosion resistance of traditional coatings, GO organic/inorganic unit composite coatings and GO multi-composite coatings. It was found that the performance of GO multi-component composite coating is far better than that of GO organic/inorganic unit composite coating and traditional coating. This is due to the excellent dispersion of GO, which enables it to fill the pores that occur during the curing and film-forming process of organic polymer materials and improve the corrosion resistance of the coating. The photogenic cathodic protection mechanism and current situation of GO anti-corrosion coating are introduced, and due to the green environmental protection and excellent anti-corrosion effect, it is regarded as the future development trend of GO composite coating. The fourth part summarizes the key scientific issues and challenges of GO composite anti-corrosion coating in the current research. It looks forward to the research direction and application prospect of GO composite anti-corrosion coating.