Ecological compensation is an important method that uses economical principles to solve eco-environmental problems. This method is widely adopted to protect environment around the world and has been proved efficient. The core of ecological compensation is how to set ecological compensation standard. Based on extensive literature survey, the theoretical foundations for setting ecological compensation standard, including ecosystem services value theory, market theory and half-market theory, are advanced. And we further summarize main methods for setting ecological compensation standard and analyze the main principles, the scope for application, features and typically applied cases of different methods. Finally, how to improve the methods for setting ecological compensation standard in the future is prospected. The article foresees the study in setting standard of ecological compensation.