In recent years, there has been a lot of attention given to the trend of including game elements into non-gaming facilities. The usage of gamification in education is a massive benefit for motivation, user interaction, and social effects. The gamified elements such as points, badge, feedbacks, level, rewards, challenges, etc. have been used in e-learning. A systematic review of gamification in online education has not been found when the relevant literature examined. Therefore, this study aims to research the current literature using gamification and online education and highlight the reported benefits and challenges of gamification applications in online education. The present research followed the literature review method. The current study employed a qualitative approach for collected data. Thus, the term "gamification" was used as the primary research keyword. The results show that gamification has increasingly been accepted as a useful learning tool to generate more engaging educational environments. Additionally, elements support and motivate students to participate in a gamification system. The study showed that the most common gamification elements used in e-learning and have a powerful effect on the students are points, leaderboards, badge, and level. This study is thought to contribute significantly to studies on the use of gamification applications in online education. It reinforces previous studies and identifies many useful study topics that can be explored to advance the field. From these results, suggestions on gamification applications in e-learning for further research are given.