The paper presents the results on the wear resistance of PVD coatings on cutting inserts made from sintered carbide and sialon ceramics. The exploitative properties of coatings in technological cutting trials were defined in the paper, which also examined the adhesion of coatings to the substrate, the thickness of the coating, and the microhardness. As a result, it was found that isomorphic coating with AlN-h phase of covalent interatomic bonds exhibits much better adhesion to the sialon substrate than isomorphic coating with titanium nitride TiN. These coatings assure the high wear resistance of the coated tools, and the high adhesion combined with the high microhardness and fine-grained structure assure an increase in the exploitative life of the coated tools. In the case of coatings on substrate made from sintered carbide, there was a significant influence on the properties of the tools coated with them as concerns the existence of the diffusion zone between the substrate and the coating.