Over the past 20 years, many efforts have been made to develop a vaccine against AIDS. The lack of an animal model that can be productively infected with HIV-1 has been partially replaced by macaque species infected with SIV or chimeric SHIV. Natural SIV and chimeric SHIV cause an infection resembling human AIDS, and Asian monkeys of genus Macaca (species mulatta, fascicularis and nemestrina) should be considered a useful surrogate in vaccine trials. A multitude of vaccines and immunization approaches have been evaluated, including live-attenuated viruses, DNA vaccines, subunit proteins and viral and bacterial vectors. The results of all these studies are often difficult to interpret due to lack of standardizations, choice of challenging virus and differences in the macaque species used. This article aims at summarizing the main characteristics of the three macaque species used in vaccine trials.