A surface-coated cutting tool comprising a base material and a coating formed on said base material, said coating including a hard layer, said hard layer including a plurality of crystal grains having a sodium chloride-type crystal structure, wherein when crystal orientation of each of said plurality of crystal grains is analyzed using an electron backscatter diffraction system for a cross section of said hard layer that is parallel to a normal direction of a surface of said base material to measure an angle of intersection between a normal direction to plane that is a crystal plane of said crystal grain and the normal direction to the surface of said base material, a proportion A of said crystal grains having said angle of intersection of 0 degree or more to less than 20 degrees is 50% or more, and a proportion B of said crystal grains having said angle of intersection of 10 degrees or more to less than 20 degrees is 30% or more; boundaries of said crystal grains include CSL boundaries and general boundaries; the length of Σ3 grain boundaries of said CSL boundaries is less than 50% of the length of Σ3-29 grain boundaries that is a total of respective lengths of Σ3 grain boundaries, Σ5 grain boundaries, Σ7 grain boundaries, Σ9 grain boundaries, Σ11 grain boundaries, Σ13 grain boundaries, Σ15 grain boundaries, Σ17 grain boundaries, Σ19 grain boundaries, Σ21 grain boundaries, Σ23 grain boundaries, Σ25 grain boundaries, Σ27 grain boundaries, and Σ29 grain boundaries included in said CSL boundaries, whether the length of Σ3 grain boundaries of said CSL boundaries is less than 50% of the length of Σ3-29 grain boundaries being determined by the method described in the description; said crystal grain has a layered structure in which a first layer composed of nitride or carbonitride of Al x Ti 1-x and a second layer composed of nitride or carbonitride of Al y Ti 1-y are alternately stacked, where x≠y, 0.6 ≤ x < 1, 0.45 ≤ y < 0.6 and the largest value of the difference between the atomic ratio x and the atomic ratio y is 0.05 or more and 0.5 or less; the atomic ratio x and the atomic ratio y are determined by a method in which a cross-section sample parallel to the normal direction of the surface of the base material in the hard layer is obtained, and the crystal grain appearing in this cross-section sample is analyzed using an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy system installed in a SEM or a TEM to calculate the atomic ratio at the analyzed portion, the analysis using the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy being repeated to expand the target for calculating the atomic ratio x and the atomic ratio y over the entire surface of the cross-section sample; the largest value of the difference between the atomic ratio x and the atomic ratio y refers to a value obtained by obtaining the difference between the largest value of all of the calculated values of the atomic ratio x and the smallest value of all of the calculated values of the atomic ratio y; a total thickness of said first layer and said second layer adjacent to each other is 3 nm or more and 40 nm or less, the total thickness being obtained by obtaining a cross-section sample at any given location, measuring the total thickness of 10 sets of adjacent first layer and second layer in 10 crystal grains appearing in the cross section, and expressing the average value as the total thickness; said hard layer has a thickness of 1 μm or more and 15 μm or less, the thickness being the average thickness, the thickness being measured by obtaining a cross-section sample parallel to the normal direction of the surface of the base material and observing this sample with a scanning transmission electron microscope using an observation magnification of 5000 to 10000 times and with an observation area of 100 to 500 μm 2 for the cross-section sample, the thickness widths at 10 places in a field of view being measured and then averaged; said hard layer has an indentation hardness by nanoindentation of 30 GPa or more and 40 GPa or less, the indentation hardness measured using a micro-minute indentation hardness tester; and said hard layer has an absolute value of compression residual stress of 0.5 GPa or more and 3.0 GPa or less, the compression residual stress being measured by the sin 2 ψ method using an X-ray stress analyzer.