Iron nitrides feature in high hardness, high melting point, high thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, safety and pollution-free, excellent electronic conductivity, as well as platinum-like electronic structure. The abundant raw material resources and low cost facilitate iron nitrides show great prospects in many fields, such as energy storage and electrocatalysis applications. This review summarizes the recent research progress of iron-based nitrides in terms of the structure, synthesis methods, electrochemical performance and applications. The advances in the field of energy storage (such as lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries) and electrocatalysis (such as hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, oxygen reduction reaction) are discussed in detail. Meanwhile, the challenges and future perspective targeting energy related applications of iron-based nitrides are outlined.