Recently, the effect of polydatin on lipid regulation has gained considerable attention. And previous study has demonstrated that polydatin has hypoglycemic effect on experimental diabetic rats. Repressed Akt pathway contributes to glucose and lipid disorders in diabetes. Thus, whether polydatin regulates glucose and lipid metabolism in experimental diabetic models through the Akt pathway arouses interest. The purpose was to explore the regulatory mechanism of polydain on glucose and lipid through Akt pathway. We used a diabetic rat model induced by high-fat and -sugar diet with low-dose of streptozocin and an insulin resistant HepG2 cell model induced by palmitic acid to clarify the role of polydatin on glucose and lipid metabolism. Here, we found that polydatin significantly attenuated fasting blood–glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin, glycosylated serum protein, total cholesterol, triglyceride, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in diabetic rats. Furthermore, polydatin significantly increased glucose uptake and consumption and decreased lipid accumulation in insulin resistant HepG2 cells. Polydatin markedly increased serum insulin levels in diabetic rats, and obviously activated the Akt signaling pathway in diabetic rat livers and insulin resistant HepG2 cells. Polydatin markedly increased phosphorylated GSK-3β, decreased the protein levels of G6Pase and SREBP-1c, and increased protein levels of GCK, LDLR, and phosphorylated IRS in livers and HepG2 cells. Overall, the results indicate that polydatin regulates glucose and lipid metabolism in experimental diabetic models, the underlying mechanism is probably associated with regulating the Akt pathway. The effect of polydatin on increased Akt phosphorylation is independent of prompting insulin secretion, but dependent of increasing IRS phosphorylation.