Safety is a crucial issue in hydrogen energy applications due to the unique properties of hydrogen. Accordingly, a suitable hydrogen sensor for leakage detection must have at least high sensitivity and selectivity, rapid response/recovery, low power consumption and stable functionality, which requires further improvements on the available hydrogen sensors. In recent years, the mature development of nanomaterials engineering technologies, which facilitate the synthesis and modification of various materials, has opened up many possibilities for improving hydrogen sensing performance. Current research of hydrogen detection sensors based on both conservational and innovative materials are introduced in this review. This work mainly focuses on three material categories, i.e., transition metals, metal oxide semiconductors, and graphene and its derivatives. Different hydrogen sensing mechanisms, such as resistive, capacitive, optical and surface acoustic wave-based sensors, are also presented, and their sensing performances and influence based on different nanostructures and material combinations are compared and discussed, respectively. This review is concluded with a brief outlook and future development trends.