OBJECTIVE：To establish a method for the contents determination of 9 components in Guizhi decoction， and compare the effects of traditional decoction method and the extracting machine decoction method on these contents in Guizhi decoction. METHODS： HPLC was performed on the column of Agilent Zorbax SB-C18 with mobile phaseof acetonitrile - 0.1％ phosphoric acid （gradient elution） at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min， the detection wavelength was 230 nm， 254 nm and 280 nm， the column temperature was 25 ℃， and the injection volume was 10 μl. RESULTS： The linear range was 0.410 2-210.0 μg/ml for gallic acid（r＝0.999 9），0.994 0-254.5 μg/ml for albiflorin（r＝0.999 9），1.636 0-1 675.0 μg/ml for paeoniflorin（r＝0.999 9），0.988 3-506.0 μg/ml for liquiritin（r＝0.999 6），0.987 3-31.59 μg/ml for coumarin（r＝0.999 5），0.486 8-124.6 μg/ml for cinnamic acid（r＝0.999 5），2.458 0-314.6 μg/ml for cinnamaldehyde（r＝0.999 5），0.034 3-1.096 μg/ml for 2-methoxy cinnamaldehyde（r＝0.999 8），and 1.711 0-219.0 μg/ml for glycyrrdhizic acid （r＝0.999 7）； RSDs of precision， stability and reproducibility tests were lower than 5％， recoveries were 93.56％-103.19％（RSD＝4.00％，n＝9）、101.51％-107.32％（RSD＝2.21％，n＝9）、95.08％-103.76％（RSD＝2.87％，n＝9）、100.82％-105.73％（RSD＝1.85％，n＝9）、85.08％-89.12％（RSD＝1.40％，n＝9）、92.31％-99.12％（RSD＝2.71％，n＝9）、99.17％-102.32％（RSD＝1.24％，n＝9）、100.15％-103.98％（RSD＝1.18％，n＝9）、99.93％-102.61％（RSD＝1.03％，n＝9）. The content of total effective components from the extracting machine decoction method was 4 565 μg/g， that from the traditional decoction method was 2 742 μg/g.CONCLUSIONS：The method is simple， stable and reproducible， and can be used for the simultaneous determination of 9 componentsin Guizhi decoction. The contents of gallic acid，albiflorin and 2-methoxy cinnamaldehyde are first reported. The total effective components from the extracting machine decoction method are higher than that from the traditional decoction method.