Increasing the pollution rate of water sources is one of the most severe issues that the world faces. This issue has stimulated researchers to investigate different treatment methods such as adsorption, chemical precipitation, membrane filtration, flocculation, ion exchange, flotation, and electrochemical methods. Among them, adsorption has gained broad interest due to its ease of operation, low cost, and high efficiency. The critical factor of the successful adsorption treatment process is finding attractive adsorbents with attractive criteria such as low cost and high adsorption capacity. In the last few decades, nanotechnology has attracted much attention, and numerous nanomaterials have been synthesized for water and wastewater treatment. This work provides a quick overview of nanomaterials, which have been investigated for water remediation as adsorbent and photocatalyst. This work reviewed more than 100 articles to provide a critical review that would determine the limitation of using nanomaterials in water treatment at the commercial scale.