Dietary compounds are crucial in maintaining human physiological functions and preventing diseases, but they can give full play to their functional activities only after being effectively absorbed and utilized by the human body. In vitro intestinal cell models have become an effective means to study the absorption and utilization mechanism of dietary compounds. Selecting the appropriate intestinal cell model and improving the existing intestinal cell models are of great significance to effectively simulate the absorption and utilization of dietary compounds in human body. In this paper, the structure and function of human intestinal epithelial cells are introduced, and recent progress in research on in vitro intestinal cell models is systematically reviewed. The intestinal absorption and transport mechanism of carotenoids is expounded, and the focus of this review is on the application of the Caco-2 single cell model and the Caco-2/HT29-MTX co-culture cell model in research on the absorption and utilization of carotenoids, so as to provide a reference for better simulation of absorption and utilization of dietary compounds in human body by using the in vitro intestinal cell absorption models.