Gastric cancer is one of the most serious malignant tumors worldwide, and metastasis is the main cause of its high mortality. The identification of genes related to gastric cancer metastasis could help to understand the developmental mechanism of gastric cancer, which will provide a foundation for the prevention and targeted therapy of gastric cancer. In this paper, we review the latest research progress in the use of animal models to screen gastric cancer metastasis-related genes and to study gene function identification method. We focus on the characteristics of different metastasis models and the method for evaluating metastasis-related gene function in vitro and in vivo. This review aims to present the ideal experimental tools for the study of the mechanism of gastric cancer metastasis and the screening of new therapeutic targets.