As far as the disposal of heterogeneous reservoir is concerned, self-diverting acidizing technique is burgeoning one for reservoir reconstruction problem. In the paper, the species and types of viscoelastic surfactants (VES) used in self-diverting acid were summarized by investigating the research status and the latest development of self-diverting acid system. The performance differences of cationic viscoelastic surfactant, amphoteric viscoelastic surfactant, nonionic viscoelastic surfactant and Gemini viscoelastic surfactant based self-diverting acid systems were analyzed systematically. The applied scope of different types of self-diverting acid system was determined and present problems were pointed out. In addition, research direction and development prospect of self-diverting acid system were forecasted.