As the spatial carrier of urban-rural transition zone, urban fringe area plays an important role in providing ecosystem services and optimizing urban pattern. In this paper, we review the theoretical framework and practical progress of ecosystem service research in urban fringe areas, define the connotation of ecosystem services in urban fringe areas based on the intersection of landscape ecology and urban and rural planning, and summarize its main features: system complexity due to spatial heterogeneity, dynamic evolution driven by urbanization, and functional diversity resulting from the interaction between human-land relations. The current study mainly adopts the technical paths of indicator evaluation method, value assessment method and model simulation method for ecosystem service assessment. The study shows that, among the ecosystem service provisioning systems in urban fringe areas, regulating services and cultural services have significant benefits in enhancing the health of the human habitat. There is a typical service trade-off relationship between ecosystem services in urban fringe areas, which is mainly reflected in the spatial competition between supporting services such as biodiversity maintenance and cultural services such as landscape aesthetics, as well as between regulating services such as pollution purification and cultural services such as recreation. Looking forward to the future research direction, this paper especially points out that the establishment of a quantitative assessment system of ecosystem services has important theoretical value and practical significance for realizing the fine control of ecological space and the optimal design of landscape pattern in urban fringe areas.