The commercial kiwifruit juice is deficient in a theoretical basis for the control of aroma characteristics during sterilization. To investigate the different sterilization methods on the aroma of kiwifruit juice, three sterilized kiwifruit juice samples, including pasteurization (PS), high temperature short time (HTST) and high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) sterilization, were observed. Results showed that a total of 15 major aroma-active compounds were identified in fresh kiwifruit juice by combination of detection frequency (DF) analysis and odor activity value (OAV); while the changes of these aroma-active compounds during PS, HTST and HHP sterilization were further studied. Quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) was applied to validate the sensory differences, showing fruity and grassy notes changed a lot after sterilization, and the HHP sample was similar to fresh sample (FS) in comparison of samples treated by other sterilization methods. Further partial least squares regression analysis (PLSR) coincided with the overall note. Among these aroma-active compounds, the decrease of C6 aldehydes and C6 alcohols such as hexanal, (E)-2-hexenal and 1-hexanol might result in the great change of grassy note while the change of fruity note might be well correlated with the decrease of esters such as methyl butyrate and ethyl butyrate during processing.