With the setting up of many tall buildings on the soft soil layers in recentyears, pile foundations have been extensively applied. The new technique forlaying foundations requires people to guarantee the quality of every pile and,as a result, a series of economical, rapid and relaible methods for pile founda-tion inspection have been developed. This paper outlines the classification,roles and functions of piles and twelve sorts of pile inspection methods whichinclude theoretical formula, static load, static empirical formula, dynamic for-mula, hammer-blow injection, mechanical impedance, stress wave analysis,hydroelectric effect, ball-blow dynamio inspection, fundamental frequency,acoustic wave and other logging methods and wave velocity dynamic rigidity.The necessity of integrated utilization of various inspection methods is alsopointed out in this paper.