The paper presents the comparative results of TiAlN coatings deposited by DC and pulsed DC asymmetric bipolar magnetron sputtering systems. The results show that, with the decreasing duty cycle and increasing pulse frequency, the coating morphology changes from a columnar to a dense structure, with finer grains. Pulsed sputtered TiAlN coatings showed higher hardness, higher residual stress, and smaller grain sizes than dc prepared TiAlN coatings. Moreover residual stress of pulsed sputtered TiAlN coatings increased on increasing pulse frequency. Meanwhile, the surface roughness decreased continuously with increasing pulsed DC frequency up to 50 kHz.