Benzoic acid is becoming a common pollutant in the environment because of its widely use in industry. We summarized different pathways of the aerobic and anaerobic degradation of benzoic acid by microorganism. Both the two- and three-component benzoic acid dioxygenases play important roles in the process of benzoic acid degradation. Gene clusters of benzoic acid degradation and regulation were introduced, and also the direction of pollution degradation by microorganism in the future.