Corrosion control and protection plays an essential role in ensuring the safety service of metal materials in various complicated environments. As the concept of sustainable development gradually gained popularity, it has become a consensus in the field of metal corrosion and protection to improve or develop green and low-toxicity anti-corrosion materials or corrosion control methods. Carbon dots (CDs) are novel zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterials with various fascinating properties, such as wide raw material sources, various preparation methods, environmental friendliness, facile surface modification and strong fluorescence properties, which have gained widespread attentions. For instance, CDs have been regarded as a kind of promising corrosion inhibitors, possessing abundant groups that can be adsorbed onto the surface of metal substrates to alleviate metal destruction in acidic or neutral corrosive medium. In addition, CDs can be used to construct intelligent corrosion protection coatings with self-healing and corrosion-reporting functions.