Objective To analyze the current research status, hotspots and trends of hawthorn leaves at home and abroad through CiteSpace knowledge mapping and bibliometrics, and provide references for its comprehensive utilization and subsequent research. Methods The Chinese and English literatures on the topic of hawthorn leaves were exported from the core collections of CNKI and Web of Science databases. After screening, 822 Chinese and 213 English literatures were included. CiteSpace was used to visualize the analysis of information such as Chinese and English authors, publishing institutions, and keywords. Results There were 44 core authors of Chinese hawthorn leaves and 97 core authors of English hawthorn leaves. Pan Haifeng was the author with the highest number of Chinese and English articles published. The main publishing institutions were universities and research institutes. The co-occurrence and clustering analysis of keywords showed that the research hotspots of hawthorn leaves mainly focused on total flavonoids, etc., and the research directions were concentrated on chemical components, etc. Keyword emergence suggested that hyperlipidemia, oxidative stress, inflammation and antioxidant are the future development direction. Conclusion The research popularity of hawthorn leaf at home and abroad shows an increasing trend of fluctuation, but inter-provincial institutional cooperation is insufficient, and it is necessary to strengthen communication and further improve the new detection methods, accurate quality control, and basic research on pharmacodynamic substances.