To establish a high-performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) fingerprinting method for Shaoyao Gancao Decoction and its content determination，and to perform quality analysis combined with chemical pattern recognition to identify differential markers.Methods:HPLC was employed with acetonitrile and 0.1% phosphoric acid as the mobile phase and gradient elution.The HPLC fingerprint spectrum of Shaoyao Gancao Decoction dry extract powder was established，and three marker compounds were measured in 30 batches of Shaoyao Gancao Decoction.Multivariate statistical methods，including correlation analysis，cluster analysis，principal component analysis(PCA)，and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis(OPLS-DA)，were applied to compare the differences between the samples and identify the differential markers.Results:The fingerprint spectrum of 30 batches of Shaoyao Gancao Decoction established 18 common peaks with similarity ranging from 0.924 to 0.996，and 10 peaks were identified as gallic acid，albiflorin，paeoniflorin，liquiritin apioside，liquiritin，1,2,3,4,6-pentyl-O-galloyl-beta-D-glucose(PGG)，galloylpaeoniflorin，isoliquiritin apioside，isoliquiritin，and glycyrrhizic acid.Paeoniflorin，liquiritin，and glycyrrhizic acid were selected as the marker compounds for content determination.The chemical pattern recognition analysis classified the Shaoyao Gancao Decoction samples into three groups and identified 10 chromatographic peaks as quality markers.Conclusion:The HPLC fingerprint of Shaoyao Gancao Decoction was established，and quality markers responsible for the batch-to-batch differences were identified.