Transcriptome sequencing was performed on eight developmental stages of Macrobrachium rosenbergii embryos, including cleavage stage Ⅰ, cleavage stage Ⅱ, blastocyst stage, gastrula stage, naupliusproprionalis, naupliusproprionalis, and flea like larva to explore the molecular regulatory mechanism of embryonic development of M. rosenbergii. A total of 156.37 Gb clean data was obtained, and 22 964 unigenes were predicted. A two-by-two comparative analysis of the embryonic samples from eight evelopmental stages of M. rosenbergii was performed, and the number of differentially expressed genes in eight embryonic samples of M. rosenbergii at different development stages were between 587 and 8 620. GO enrichment analysis of differentially expressed genes showed that up-regulated expressed genes were mainly enriched in GO functional categories related to cell development, growth, and motility. Meanwhile, the down-regulated expressed genes were mainly enriched in GO functional categories related to translational regulation, chemotaxis, antioxidant, and detoxification activities of cells. KEEG enrichment analysis found that differentially expressed genes pathways were mainly enriched in metabolic pathways related to cell growth and normal physiological and biochemical processes. This study obtained a large amount of transcriptome information on M. rosenbergii embryo and discovered differentially expressed genes related to embryonic development and their main enrichment functions and pathways, providing useful transcriptome resources for the embryo research of M. rosenbergii.