A review will be given of noncontact atomic force microscopes (NC-AFM) used in the studies related to surface catalysis, demonstrating that the NC-AFM is a promising probe microscope for catalyst research. In the NC-AFM measurement, weak attractive forces between the tip end and the sample are detected and used to regulate the tip-surface distance. In principle, atomically resolved images can be obtained for every material irrespective of conductivity. This is important because many industrial catalysts employ insulating materials such as alumina and silica as supports. Thus the NC-AFM can bridge the “material gap” between industrial catalysts and model catalysts by using realistic model surfaces. Furthermore, atom-scale NC-AFM imaging has been successfully demonstrated in air and water as well as in vacuum, indicating the potential of NC-AFM also to conquer the “pressure gap”.