Abstract. Over the past 4 decades, a number of numerical models have been developed to quantify the magnitude, investigate the spatial and temporal variations, and understand the underlying mechanisms and environmental controls of methane (CH₄) fluxes within terrestrial ecosystems. These CH₄ models are also used for integrating multi-scale CH₄ data, such as laboratory-based incubation and molecular analysis, field observational experiments, remote sensing, and aircraft-based measurements across a variety of terrestrial ecosystems. Here we summarize 40 terrestrial CH₄ models to characterize their strengths and weaknesses and to suggest a roadmap for future model improvement and application. Our key findings are that (1) the focus of CH₄ models has shifted from theoretical to site- and regional-level applications over the past 4 decades, (2) large discrepancies exist among models in terms of representing CH₄ processes and their environmental controls, and (3) significant data–model and model–model mismatches are partially attributed to different representations of landscape characterization and inundation dynamics. Three areas for future improvements and applications of terrestrial CH₄ models are that (1) CH₄ models should more explicitly represent the mechanisms underlying land–atmosphere CH₄ exchange, with an emphasis on improving and validating individual CH₄ processes over depth and horizontal space, (2) models should be developed that are capable of simulating CH₄ emissions across highly heterogeneous spatial and temporal scales, particularly hot moments and hotspots, and (3) efforts should be invested to develop model benchmarking frameworks that can easily be used for model improvement, evaluation, and integration with data from molecular to global scales. These improvements in CH₄ models would be beneficial for the Earth system models and further simulation of climate–carbon cycle feedbacks.