As a fascinating visible-light driven photocatalyst, silver (meta) vanadate with the merits of narrow band gap, well crystallization and easy preparation has been a hotspot in the field of photocatalysis. Generally, pristine silver (meta) vanadate suffers from photocorrosion, high recombination rate of photogenerated e(-)-h(+) pairs, poor quantum yield and insufficient sunlight absorption, resulting in poor photocatalytic performance. Typically, heterojunction structure construction, noble metal loading, and cocatalyst binding have been explored to improve the photocatalytic performance of silver (meta) vanadate by enhancing stability, accelerating charge separation and transportation, prolonging the lifetime of charge carriers and increasing light absorption. Therefore, this review provided insights into the recent progress in the development of efficient modified silver (meta) vanadate and their application in photocatalytic degradation of pollutant, water splitting, and bacteria disinfection. Meanwhile, this review summarized the synthetic methods commonly used in silver (meta) vanadate synthesis. Moreover, as the photocatalytic activity is structure-dependent, the relationship between morphology and photocatalytic property of silver (meta) vanadate was discussed in this review. Finally, the current challenges and the crucial issues of modified silver (meta) vanadate that are in urgent need of being addressed in future research are presented. It is expected that this review could provide meaningful knowledge to help rationally design and fabricate highly-efficient silver (meta) vanadate-based photocatalysts.