Objective To review the animal species, modeling method, and evaluation indexes of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) animal models at home and abroad to provide suggestions for improving the success rate of establishing DCM animal models with Chinese medicine characteristics, and to provide a reference to establish future DCM animal models. Methods The literature on animal models of dilated cardiomyopathy in the past 10 years was searched, and relevant reports were collected and summarized. Relevant parameters of experimental animals (species, sex, and body weight, et al), modeling method, modeling cycles, positive control drugs and cycles, and model evaluation indexes were summarized and analyzed. Results A total of 128 reports were included. Animal models of dilated cardiomyopathy were mostly prepared in SD and Wistar rats using anthracycline and adriamycin, with a cycle of 30 ~ 60 d. Echocardiography and pathological HE staining were usually applied to assess the success of model establishment. Among the studies containing positive control drugs, captopril was the most often used, followed by carvedilol. No studies involved explicit TCM evidence-based modeling. Conclusions Although many method are used to model dilated cardiomyopathy in animals, unified evaluation criteria are lacking. Therefore, it is recommended to integrate the result of imaging, pathology, biochemistry, and general conditions into the evaluation index of the model. Few studies on animals with frontier genetic genotypes exist in China, and standard dosages of modeling drugs for drug induction method are limited. Therefore, future modeling method and evaluation systems of dilated cardiomyopathy animal models need to be improved. Compared with animal models of heart failure, there is a lack of relevant evidence modeling, and the animal models of dilated cardiomyopathy in Chinese medicine require further development.