【Objective】This study aimed to understand the research status and future development trend of soil and plant diversity-related fields.【Method】The research status, hotspots, and frontier trends in soil and plant diversity using bibliometrics and CiteSpace visualization software, based on the core database of Web of Science (WOS) and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, were systematically analyzed.【Result】The results showed that the total number of publications in both Chinese and English within the field of soil and plant diversity continued to rise from 2000 to 2024, showing an explosive growth around 2016. The total number of articles published in the CNKI database was 17.72% of those in the WOS database. Also, the number of publications in the field of soil and plant diversity in China and the United States accounted for 34.85% and 24.35% of the total number of papers, respectively. Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California System, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique were the main publishing institutions and hubs. Keywords of Chinese literature mainly focused on diversity, plant community, soil nutrients, and environmental factors, with the research frontiers including functional traits, altitude gradient, redundancy analysis, Pinus massoniana, and β-diversity. The keywords of English literature mainly revolved around plant diversity, biodiversity, species richness, vegetation, and community, with the research frontiers encompassing ecosystem multifunctionality, nitrogen addition, phylogenetic diversity, etc. This paper summarizes the dilemmas of dimension imbalance, scale limitation and path dependence in the current research, and puts forward some suggestions, such as constructing multi-trophic interaction network, promoting the two-way interaction between local empirical and global models, from correlation to causal mechanism analysis and constructing biodiversity-oriented ecological management technology.【Conclusion】Future research should focus on promoting the bidirectional internationalization of achievements with Chinese ecological characteristics and the localization of international frontier methods， thereby realizing the mutual development of regional practice and global theory.