Abstract: With the development and progress of industry, traditional knives can no longer meet the needs of production and processing. Compared with traditional tools, coated tools have the advantages of higher wear resistance, hardness and thermal stability. Therefore, coated tools not only improve the machining efficiency, but also have better machining precision and fatigue life. Combined with the development of tool coating technology in recent years, the paper introduces two kinds of hard and soft coating materials, the preparation methods of coating materials and the influence of surface treatment on the cutting performance of coating tools. Two commonly used coating preparation methods are physical vapor deposition and chemical vapor deposition.and the development of coated toolsare discussed.