This paper aims to discuss a comprehensive survey on clustering algorithms for wireless sensor networks (WSN). The several real-time applications adopted the WSN with the advance features. But the capacity and size of the battery used in the sensor nodes are limited. Battery replacement or recharging is very difficult in most outdoor applications. Hence handling this kind of network is one of the issues. One of the best solutions to the energy issue is Clustering. Clustering is to balance the energy consumption of the whole network by cluster-based architecture to prolong the network lifetime. Sensor nodes grouped into clusters; one sensor node selects as the cluster head for each cluster. The cluster head sensor node collects the data from their sensor member nodes and forwards them to the sink node. In cluster-based architecture, cluster formation and the selection of the cluster head node decides the network lifetime. The paper discusses the for and against various clustering algorithms. It suggests the vital parameters for developing energy-efficient clustering algorithms and steps to overcome the limitations.