In order to screen the differential expression of young shoot pigment related genes of the tea plant. In this study, tea cultivars for example purple bud ‘Zijuan’, green bud ‘Yunkang No.10’ and ‘Fuding Dabaicha’ were used as materials. The contents and compositions of anthocyanin and catechin were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography-mass (HPLC-MS), and the expression of synthesis-related genes were tested by RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) and quantitative real-time (qRT-PCR) technology. HPLC-MS analysis results showed that the contents of anthocyanin in ‘Zijuan’, ‘Yunkang No.10’ and ‘Fuding Dabaicha’ were 5.05 mg/g, 0.08 mg/g and 0.15 mg/g, respectively, and the variance was significantly difference among purple bud vs. green bud tea cultivars (P<0.05). Catechin contents of three tea cultivars were 15.12 mg/g, 19.52 mg/g and 15.09 mg/g, respectively, their difference were not significant (P?0.05). RNA-Seq results showed that a total of 255 079 reads were produced and assembled into a total of 166 118 unigenes. All unigenes were identified as putative homologs of annotated sequences in public protein databases, of which 54 446 were assigned to GO terms, 30 666 were assigned to KOG categories, and 20 336 were assigned to KEGG pathways. DEG-Seq analysis results indicated that 434 differentially expressed genes between purple bud vs. green bud tea cultivars, mainly related 38 metabolic pathways. Further analysis was found, 112 genes were expressed in anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway of tea plant, among them15 genes were differentially expressed between purple bud vs. green bud tea cultivars. We found that the relative expression of PAL (cluster-1850.70337), CHS (cluster-21971.0), ANS (cluster-1850.80848) and UFGT (cluster-1850.77163) were up-regulated expression in purple bud tea cultivar, but the relative expression of these genes showed no significantly difference among green bud tea cultivars. Which was consistent with the anthocyanin synthesis changes. FLS (Cluster-1850.81068) genes were up-regulated expression in green bud tea cultivars, may be related to the catechin accumulation in green bud tea cultivars. The expressed contents of the selected 9 differentially expressed genes by the qRT-PCR, were basically the same with the sequencing results by RNA-Seq technology. Therefore, based on the differential gene expression patterns, this study suggested that PAL、CHS、ANS and UFGT genes may plays an important role in anthocyanin synthesis of purple bud tea plant. Transcriptome information about leaf color was explored for tea plant, and the differentially expressed genes were identified in this study. It will provide a theoretical basis for further understanding of the leaf color in the tea plant.