Isolated heterogeneous single-site catalysts have been attracted great interest in diverse catalytic reactions because of their uniform and distinct geometric and electronic structure. Among various porous supports, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), with molecular level structure control and modularity, offer the versatile platforms for supporting isolated single-site catalysts. Owing to the well-defined anchoring sites lying in the nodes, ligands or nanopores of MOFs, the single-site catalysts could be grafted precisely without protection by bulky ligands. More interestingly, together with the nanopore confinement effect of MOFs, single-site catalysts could exhibit the excellent performances in terms of catalytic activity, selectivity and stability. In this review, we focus on summarizing the recent advances in the precise design, synthesis, characterization and catalytic applications of isolated single-site catalysts supported by MOFs and elucidating the relationship between structure and performance of single-site catalysts. Finally, we give a perspective on controllable synthesis of isolated single-site catalysts supported by MOFs as well as their catalytic applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.