Abstract: Tantalum and niobium identified as the critical materials by the United States, the European Union and Japan, play an important role in many fields such as machinery, energy, aerospace, medicine, and so on, although the output of tantalum and niobium in 2017 was just 1 300 t and 64 000 t, respectively. The properties, applications, distribution of mineral deposits, types of ore, reserves and output about tantalum and niobium were introduced. The typical tantalum and niobium deposits in the world were also introduced. Meanwhile, the price, supply and demand of tantalum and niobium in global world were analyzed. The results indicated that the proved reserves of tantalum and niobium in the world were sufficient, but the output of that was monopolized by a few countries. Tantalum mining was mainly in central Africa-Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, where the resources mined by manual work were mainly weathered eluvial deposit. Due to the fast-growing requirements of lithium, Australia as a major country of lithium would be the main producer of tantalum by recycling tantalum associated in the lithium deposits. So the supply of tantalum would be transferred from Africa to Australia and other countries. Niobium mining was concentrated in a few large alkaline carbonate niobium deposits in Brazil and Canada, and they would be the key countries of niobium supply because of their abundant resources. The supply market of tantalum was disordered resulting fluctuations in price. What's more, the supply market of niobium was highly monopolized. Therefore the price was determined by industry titans. Based on the above analysis, the exploration and development projects of niobium and tantalum mineral resources should focus on the market analysis and compare with the technical and economic indicators of the major mining projects in the world to avoid failed investment.