This review covers an important class of soft-materials – peptide-based hydrogels, distinctively focussing on the different types of small peptide/low molecular weight and polypeptide-based hydrogels and illustrating their structural motifs, aspects of their aggregation behaviour and morphology, which provides a general platform for various applications. This is an endeavour to understand the relationship between the peptide design, the resultant conformation, and morphological properties of the self-assembled peptide with the hope to provide a starting point for further explorations that ultimately may lead to more practical applications.