The surface coating layer applied on the casting mold serves as to separate the metal liquid from sand mold, to prevent the chemical or physical reactions in high temperature situation. Performance of surface coating layer dependents on several factors: thickness, adhesive, uniformity, permeability, heat conductivity and high temperature properties. These factors of coating layer is closely relate to the composition of coating materials. When a resin bonded sand mold is used for casting, coating is necessary to be applied on mold surface to increase the quality of casting. But the evaluation methods for resin bonded mold and coating layer are somehow different. In this paper, the theories and equations for measuring permeability have been reviewed, and then a self constructed equipment was used to measure the permeability of surface coatings for full mold casting, and the traditional method was used to measure the permeability of resin bonded sand mold. The permeability measured by these two methods will be discussed.