In this paper, exact single travelling wave solutions to the nonlinear fractional perturbed Gerdjikov–Ivanov equation are captured by the complete discrimination system for polynomial method and the trial equation method. In the classification, we can find out the original equation has rational function solutions, solitary wave solutions, triangular function periodic solutions, and elliptic function periodic solutions, which are normally very difficult to be obtained by other methods. In particular, the concrete parameters are set to show that the solutions in the classification can be realized in almost all cases.