Iron deficiency anaemia is a major health problem world wide. In India, prevalence of anaemia is very high. Oral iron therapy is the commonest treatment of this disease .Large number of iron salts is available in market for oral iron therapy. In clinical practice oral iron supplementation commonly used are Fe sulfate, Fe fumarate. These conventional iron preparations have more gastrointestinal intolerance but are cheap. There are many new iron salts marketed (Fe bisglycinate, Carbonyl iron, Iron polymaltose complex etc) which claim to have low gastrointestinal intolerance, increase Hb level faster and improve iron stores better than conventionally used iron salts. This review is aimed towards collection of information about conventional and newer oral iron preparations. Literature search is done by using internet, text books of Pharmacology and Medicine and Journals available in medical college library. The newer preparations do have less side effects, but are very costly and there are many studies which shows controversy with these newer preparations, which should be further evaluated. Thus conventional iron preparations still can be considered as best cost effective choice with tolerable side effects for prophylaxis and treatment of iron deficiency anaemia.