Display omitted •Development of isotropic and mesophase pitch by controlled heat treatment of parent coal tar pitch leads to increase in softening point of the precursor.•Stabilisation time, temperature and rate should be finely tuned as the radial variation in oxygen content in the fiber causes defects in further processing.•Pyrolysis of stabilized fiber determines the structural properties of the final carbon fiber product. Beyond 1200 °C, the graphitic structure gets formed along the fiber axis. Therefore, tensile, thermal and electrical properties increase with increase in pyrolysis temperature.•GPCF has a typical tensile strength in the range of 3500-4500 MPa and tensile modulus of 230-270 GPa. This are suitable for automotive applications.•Carbon fiber finds its major application in carbon composites manufacturing. Apart from that, activated carbon fiber is used in water treatment and many other areas. Some high end applications like medical material, energy storage material has also been explored. This review focuses on recent development of technologies used for producing coal tar pitch-based carbon fiber along with its applications. In the first part, modification of coal tar pitch by different methods for obtaining the carbon fiber precursor was presented. In the second part, melt spinning process for producing the green fiber and subsequent post spinning stabilisation and pyrolysis process was described. The present review article shows that an extensive research on pitch modification has been done through heat treatment process. Development of isotropic and mesophase pitch by controlled low temperature pyrolysis of parent coal tar pitch leads to increase in softening point of the precursor, which is a vital parameter. This article is also evident that the stabilisation time, temperature and rate should be finely tuned to obtain fiber of desired properties. Carbonisation beyond 1200 °C seems to be sufficient for obtaining an ordered structure. All the possible applications of carbon fiber have been portrayed in the current review article. It was observed that the main application of carbon fiber is in the composite manufacturing sector. Starting from carbon-carbon composite to metal composites, carbon fiber found its major applications. Apart from that, activated carbon fiber had also been a topic of interest in the research domain.