The invention discloses a process for extracting rutin from sophora japonica, which comprises the following steps of: (1) preparing and crushing sophora japonica, putting the crashed sophora japonica into an extraction tank, washing and moistening the crashed sophora japonica with boiling water, and then, introducing an extraction solvent for carrying out reverse percolation extraction, wherein the extraction solvent is a mixture of saturated lime water, borax and sodium sulfite, the proportioning by weight of the saturated lime water to the borax to the sodium sulfite is 1000:4-6:0.5-1.5, and the pressure of the reverse percolation extraction is 0.2-0.3MPa; and (2) carrying out cascade filtration on the reverse percolation extraction solution, adding hydrochloric acid after cooling to regulate the pH value to 3-4, crystallizing, taking out crystals, washing the crystals with water to the neutrality, and drying the crystals to obtain finished products. Compared with the prior art, in the invention, by using reverse percolation extraction to replace percolation extraction and combining the extraction solvent with special proportioning, the rutin in the sophora japonica can be extracted more completely, thus the extraction rate is high, and residues in the percolation solution are few and can be filtered more easily; and the invention has the advantages of simple and convenient operation and short production cycle, and the product purity can reach more than 97.5%.