• This review will offer the importance of challenging C 2s /C 1 separation by MOFs. • Organization and summarization of more than a hundred examples have been made. • An in-depth critical discussion on this topic has been provided. • The key issues and future prospects are also discussed in detail. • Appealing review to the wider scientific communities, including their industry partners. Gas separation processes have significant impacts on human society’s current needs, starting from industrial, environmental, energy to high-value chemical necessities. Natural gas (NG) is used in various sectors across the globe and accounted to 32% of U.S. total primary energy consumption in 2019. Raw NG consisting primarily of C 1 hydrocarbon (CH 4 ) possesses a significant amount of C 2 hydrocarbons (5–9%) which needs to be removed and considered as the major step of NG processing. The high cost associated with the cryogenic high-pressure distillation process for the separation of C 2s /C 1 hydrocarbons from NG restricts its widespread usage. Porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), offer remarkable promise for such C 2s /C 1 hydrocarbon separations because of their easy tunability, functionality, and designability. Around a hundred of MOFs have been designed and synthesized for the potential applications in C 2s /C 1 hydrocarbon separations. Such reports are increasing swiftly and thus demands a summarization for at a glance visualization. In this review, we intend to showcase the development of MOFs with the superiority over other developed porous materials for such separation. We have described the strategies taken to obtain the trade-off between C 2s sorption capacity and separation selectivity of C 2s /C 1 . Furthermore, the challenges and future prospects are discussed elaborately.