This paper is to study the inhibitory effect of water soluble polymers — methyl cellulose (MC), hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC), hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC-M), poloxamer (F68) and polyvidon (PVP) on osthole (OST) crystallization and investigate the impact of polymer concentration and viscosity on crystallization behavior.  Also, UV spectrophotometry method was used to determine the drug concentration at different time point to draw the OST concentration-time curve.  Results show that HPMC has the most significant inhibition effect on OST crystallization, and drug concentration level is 1.61 times higher than that in control solution within 8 h followed by PVP (1.54) and MC (1.45) respectively.  The kinetics of OST recrystallization can be described using first-order reaction, and the crystallization rate constants obtained by analyzing the regression equation indicate that HPMC-60SH-4000 and HPMC-60SH-10000 can greatly influence OST crystal formation.  The dissolution rate of drugs precipitated from water-soluble polymer solutions is faster compared with controls in pH 1.2 HCl and pH 6.8 phosphate buffers, which demonstrated that water-soluble polymers can not only change the behavior of drug crystallization but markedly improve the dissolution rate of water insoluble drugs.