A soil incubation experiment was conducted to study the effects of soil moisture indexes including the absolute water content, alternation of wetting and drying, relative soil water content and soil water potential on nutrient release characteristics of two kinds of coated urea in three kinds of soils. The release durations of the two kinds of tested fertilizers were 60 days and 90 days, referred to as fertilizer A and fertilizer B, respectively. The results showed that nutrient release rate of coated urea increased significantly when the soil absolute water content increased from 50g/kg to 200g/kg, and the soil moisture was the main influential factor of nutrient release of coated urea. Under dry-wet alternate condition, the differences of the release rates between two fertilizers became greater, the release rate of the coated urea B was much lower in alluvial soil than that in the other soils. When the relative water content increased from 0% to 50% or soil water potential within the scope of 60 kPa to 100 kPa, the release rate of the coated urea was much higher in krasnozem than those in the other soils which is associated with high clay content in krasnozem. When the relative water content surpassed 100% or soil water potential was below 60 kPa, the effects of soil moisture and soil type became slight on nutrient release of coated urea. The frequently-used Sugihara equation could well describe the nutrient release characteristics of coated urea under soil moisture conditions designed in the experiment, and r > 0.95. All of the three soil moisture indexes can be used to predict nutrient release rate and duration of the coated urea, but the best fitting effect was occurred between water potential (x) and duration (y), the relation is y = 64.79e^0.0066x (r=0.91).