The modeling of catalytic hydrotreatment reactors for petroleum fractions have been classified in several ways, for example steady‐state and dynamic, pseudohomogeneous, and heterogeneous, and so on. Depending on the system to be modeled, operating conditions and type of feedstock, these approaches could exhibit some advantages and disadvantages, wide scopes and limitations. In this review, the discussion about those modeling aspects, already published, is used to develop a generalized reactor model, which can be simplified in order to derive each single model previously reported. Some guides to estimate model parameters are also given.