RF guns: a review

Free Electron Lasers and future linear colliders require very bright electron beams. Conventional injectors made of DC guns and RF bunchers have intrinsic limitations. The recently proposed RF guns have already proven their capability to produce bright beams. The necessary effort to improve further these performances and to gain reliability is now undertaken by many laboratories. More than twenty RF gun projects both thermionic and laser-driven are reviewed. Their specific characteristics are outlined and their nominal performances are given