This paper was designed to assess the adhesive properties of hard coatings on non-nitrided and nitrided various tool steels. Estimations of adhesion were done to scratch test which is mainly used in hard coating. The critical load$(L_c)$ between coating and substrate is defined through analysis of frictional load vs. normal load curve, signals of acoustic emission and optical observations. Coatings employed in this study are TiN, CrN and TiAlN, tools as substrates are STD11, STD61 and SKH51. It was classified to substrates with/without intermediate nitrided layer and hard coatings on substrate were deposited by arc PVD. Results showed that harder substrates and coatings give higher values of critical loads.