Instantaneous frequency is an important seismic attribute, which helps in identification of oil and gas reservoirs and is of great significance to reservoir prediction. This paper provides a detailed review of several common instantaneous frequency calculation methods and tests using analytical sinusoidal signals. The instantaneous frequency calculation results of each algorithm are compared with the analytical instantaneous frequency of sinusoidal signals, and various instantaneous frequency calculation methods are compared by comprehensively analyzing the correlation number, error between the calculated results and the theoretical analytical instantaneous frequency, and operation time. In order to further test the performance of each algorithm, we apply the more complex signals to each instantaneous frequency calculation method to analyze and compare. The test results of analytic and complex signals show that the performance of each algorithm varies for different types of data. The method that can relatively accurately calculate the instantaneous frequency of a simple analytical signal will have outliers, "negative frequencies", or inaccurate calculation results when calculating the instantaneous frequency of complex signals. Outliers and "negative frequencies" that appear during instantaneous frequency calculations will submerge the actual effective instantaneous frequency information. Further work is needed to overcome the problems of outliers and "negative frequencies".