Objective To explore the potential categories of health literacy in peritoneal dialysis patients and the relationship between the categories and self-management ability. Methods A total of 346 patients in the department of nephrology were selected to fill out the general data questionnaire, the Health literacy Scale for Chronic Disease Patients and the Self-Management Scale for Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis Patients.Mplus 8.3 was used for latent profile analysis, and SPSS 25.0 software was used to compare the differences in patients′ self-management ability by category of health literacy. Results The health literacy level of peritoneal dialysis patients could be divided into 3 categories:low-health-literacy-low-energy type （21.10%）, medium-health-literacy-good-acceptance type （63.58%） and high-health-literacy-high-willingness type（15.32%）. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that age, educational attainment, long-term residence, length of time on peritoneal dialysis therapy and peritonitis were factors that influenced patients′ membership of health literacy categories (all P<0.05). There were significant differences in dimension scores and total scores of self-management ability among the 3 categories of peritoneal dialysis patients (all P<0.05). Conclusion There were 3 potential categories of health literacy in peritoneal dialysis patients, and the self-management ability of patients varied among the categories. Specialist nurses should carry out targeted intervention aiming at characteristics of varied health literacy categories, so as to improve patients′ self-management ability.