Vegetation phenology directly reflects the response of ecosystem physiological and ecological processes to environmental changes and has received increasing attention in climate change, which leads to the development of various phenology monitoring techniques and methods of extracting the phenological index. Based on relevant literatures, the monitoring techniques of vegetation phenology were reviewed. Second, the methods of extracting phenological index using different techniques were introduced systematically. Thirdly, the differences from multi-source data and from multi-methods were evaluated based on ground phenology record, flux observation and vegetation index. Although various methods have been adopted in current vegetation phenological studies, it should be aware of their appropriately spatiotemporal scales for different methods, and the mutual complementation will help to improve the system for phenology monitoring. Meanwhile, the comparison indicated the obvious differences in derived vegetation phenological index using various observation techniques and extraction methods, especially for the autumn vegetation phenological index. Such results highlight the importance to assess reasonably these differences from multi-source data and from multi-methods, and to establish a rational processing system for the mutual comparison and conversion from different methods.