Membrane technologies have been at the heart of research since last few decades with latest improvement in both fabrication and analytical tools. Porous polymeric membranes have gained much attention in this perspective for their utilization in a variety of fields. This review article is mainly concerned with reporting the research work being conducted so far in the direction of fabricating porous polymer membranes. In this context, various additives used to design porous polymer membranes resulting in well-controlled and broad variety of morphologies are being discussed. However, the emphasis of this review is on the use of various additives mainly different water-soluble pore formers (WSP) in polymeric membranes such as PVP, PEG and PAA. The effect of these WSP on pure water flux, hydrophilicity, fouling, mechanical strength and applications of porous membranes in various fields has also been explained in detail.