The container terminal is considered as a supply chain station where freight containers are transferred from the sea into the hinterland or vice versa. Port terminal operators have to brighten up their strategies for increasing port performance to compete with other rival marine ports. Technological advances in port operation have created a wide variety of study options for port designers, but little attention has been paid to the fully examine factor influence in port performance from both technical operation and management perspectives simultaneously. The paper aims to substantially review factors that influenced container terminal performances. The authors report a systematic literature review conducted using the method of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. 106 published articles have been gathered from Web of Sciences journal databases. The findings of the review classify the domain of the studies into eight main themes such as assignment, scheduling, optimization, strategic management, risk, performance evaluation, information system, and maintenance. The literature review also identified trends of those main themes. Furthermore, the studies found the highest performance cluster of container terminals focused on operation, facility, and equipment. In conclusion, operation time, container handling time, and quay crane productivity have been identified as the primary elements that influenced container terminal performance.