In this study, tungsten oxide coatings with 13 and 75at% of oxygen were prepared by DC reactive magnetron sputtering from a pure W target in an Ar+O 2 atmosphere. The coating hardness (H) decreased with increasing oxygen content from 25 to 7.7GPa. The values of H/E ratio were 0.08 and 0.07 for W 87 O 13 and W 25 O 75 , respectively.The tribological measurements were carried out on a pin-on-disc tribometer at room temperature, with a load of 5N and steel 100Cr6, ceramic Si 3 N 4 and Al 2 O 3 balls as sliding partners. The wear track and wear debris were visualised by scanning electron microscopy and the chemical composition of the later was estimated by energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. The friction coefficient was rather high in case of the W 87 O 13 coating reaching values in the range from 0.7 to 0.75 for both counterpart materials, and slightly lower for W 25 O 75 (∼0.50). The coating wear rate decreased with increasing oxygen content with the Al 2 O 3 ball, while using Si 3 N 4 ball as a counterpart showed an opposite trend. The coating with low oxygen content was more resistant to abrasive wear.