Metastatic gastric cancer is a lethal disease with a very short overall survival. Although several molecular target therapies have been investigated, the results were not good. Only few agents like trastuzumab and ramucirumab could improve the prognosis of patients with metastatic gastric cancer. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is considered to be related to the tumor development, and the expression of VEGF was high in advanced gastric cancer. Thus targeting VEGF is one of promising strategy in the treatment of gastric cancer. Among therapeutic agents which target angiogenesis, apatinib is a novel oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting VEGFR2. It has a good oral bioavailability and has been confirmed to be effective in gastric cancer. The recent clinical trials displayed that as a third line treatment, apatinib could improve the outcome of gastric cancer significantly, so apatinib is very likely to be the key drug of gastric cancer. Here we review the antitumor mechanism, pharmacokinetics, efficiency, safety, relevant clinical trials and recent research progress of apatinib briefly.