OBJECTIVE To establish the grade s tandard for Panax quinquefoli um and to evaluate the quality of different grades of medicinal materials. METHODS Totally 24 batches of P. quinquefolium were used as test samples. Pearson correlation analysis method was used to analyze the correlation between qualitative analysis indicators （taproot length ，taproot diameter and weight of single root ）and internal component indicators （ethanol-soluble extract ，and the contents of ginsenoside Rg 1，ginsenoside Re ， ginsenoside Rb 1，ginsenoside Rc ，ginsenoside Rb 2，ginsenoside Rd ，pseudo-ginsenoside F 11）. Combined with chemometrics methods，the reference indexes for the classification of P. quinquefolium were selected ，and the classification standards were formulated. HPLC-ELSD fingerprints of 24 batches of P. quinquefolium were established and their similarity evaluation was also performed. The chromatographic peaks were identified by comparison with the reference substance ，and then the quality of different grades of P. quinquefolium was evaluated by cluster analysis. RESULTS After screening ，taproot diameter ，the weight of single root and the content of ginsenoside Rd were taken as the reference indexes for the classification of P. quinquefolium . According to above 3 indexes，P. quinquefolium were divided into 3 grades：special grade ，first grade and second grade. According to the center value of K-means clustering ，the total score of special-grade medicinal materials was more than 135.40，that of first-grade medicinal materials was 61.82-135.40，and that of second-grade medicinal materials was less than 61.82. In the HPLC-ELSD fingerprints of 24 batches of P. quinquefolium ，25 common peaks were confirmed ，and 7 characteristic peaks were identified. The similarity of the chromatograms of P. quinquefolium of special grade ，first grade and second grade with fingerprints ranged 0.980-0.989，0.962-0.968，0.940-0.949，respectively. The results of cluster analysis showed that different grades of P. quinquefolium could be identified significantly. CONCLUSIONS The grade standard and HPLC-ELSD fingerprints of P. quinquefolium are established，which can be applied for exclusive identification of P. quinquefolium ，and provide reference for its quality control and grade classification.