Abstract: Objective To analyze the social demographic characteristics and the risk factors of HIV-positive population from Xuhui voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) from 2008 to 2015, and compare the differences of infectious routes, CD4 counts and progression of disease between two groups of patients who were detected from VCT and general hospitals. Methods Cross-sectional study was conducted to describe the relative information of HIV-positive population from VCT. The VCT group and the hospital group were established and the relative data of two groups was collected for retrospective study and comparison. Results Among VCT-positive population, the ratio between male and female was 21.09:1. 48. 97% of the patients were among the age of 20 to 29. 71.60% were unmarried, and 67.49% had the college degree or higher education level. The groups, who were men who have sex with men (MSM), or with the age <20 or ≥ 50, or divorced and widowed, or with lower education level, had higher positive rates. The percentage of homosexual transmission in VCT group was higher than that of hospital group. The median values of the first CD4 test were 360 cells/μl and 293 cells/μl. The median values of incubation period were 2 115 days and 942 days. Conclusions Most of the positive patients from Xuhui VCT are young, unmarried MSM population with higher education level. Those high-risk subgroups, such as young students, elderly population, lower education level groups, divorced or widowed population, should be paid close attention. The advantage of early discovery of HIV patients from VCT is obviously higher than that of general hospital.