Cyanobacteria represent an almost ideal cellular platform for biotechnological production. However, many obstacles hinder their rapid introduction into industrial exploitation. Due to their relative ease of genetic manipulation, several improvements of the cyanobacterial chassis are under way to ensure an improved flow of carbon and reduced power into engineered biosynthetic pathways. This goes in parallel with evolving versatile tools for synthetic biology and with efforts to improve biosafety of genetically modified cyanobacteria. Even in the absence of optimal tools and cellular platforms, there are numerous reports of successful production of carbohydrates, alcohols, lipids, phenyl propanoids, and terpenoids that prove that synthetic biology based approaches in cyanobacteria are likely to result in the economically feasible production of biomolecules, including drugs and fuels.