In order to grasp the research status and frontier trends of the soil seed bank at home and abroad, and objectively reflect the influences of various countries, institutions and researchers in this field, this article, based on bibliometric analysis, analyzed the related research results of Web of Science database from 1999 to 2020 and CNKI database from 1983 to 2020. The results showed that the trends of scientific research are different at home and abroad. Papers have increased year by year in foreign journals but have declined since 2009 at home. In the rankings of published documents countries, the United States ranks first while China ranks third. The degree of close cooperation between countries is relatively small. In comparison, the United States has the largest contribution to cooperation. The Chinese Academy of Sciences publishes the most articles and has the largest total citations. The main foreign journals that publish related papers are Plant Ecology, Journal of Vegetation Science and Applied Vegetation Science, and the main Chinese journals are Journal of Ecology, Journal of Ecology and Plant Ecology Journals. Papers in this field are mainly concentrated in the three disciplines of Environmental Science & Ecology, Ecology and Plant Science in foreign papers, while mainly concentrated in the three disciplines of Agricultural Resources & Environment, Forestry and Biology at home. At present, the research on soil seed banks mainly focuses on the characteristics of the seeds in the seed bank and their relationship with the aboveground vegetation, the seed persistence in soil and the application of ecological reconstruction. In the future, research on soil seed banks should actively explore new scientific issues, take into account more research fields, strengthen the role in solving practical problems, and improve China's scientific research level and influence. Combining with the ecological problems brought about by global climate change, strengthen international research cooperation, use soil seed banks to reflect ecological changes on a global scale, and provide decision-making reference for ecological problems.