Moderate thick plate is widely used in shipbuilding, steel structure construction, machinery manufacturing, pressure vessel manufacturing, and other engineering fields, and its welding is also one of an important link in industry production. The conventional welding technology of moderate thick plate with unstable quality and low degree of automation is complicated, and the welding efficiency is greatly restricted. Therefore, the development of high-efficiency welding technology for the moderate thick plate can improve the overall production efficiency of the industry, and is of great significance. In this paper, the principle, characteristics and development status of the typical high-efficiency welding methods in the fields of backing welding, filling welding, capping welding and deep penetration welding are summarized, and the existing problems in the engineering application of the high-efficiency welding technology are analyzed, and the development direction of high-efficiency welding technology for the moderate thick plate is pointed out.