A surface-coated cutting tool includes a coating layer having a laminated structure that includes first sublayers and second sublayers having a cubic crystal structure and has an average thickness of 0.5 to 8 m, the bottommost and topmost sublayers being both first sublayers; the first sublayer has an average thickness of 0.1 to 2 m and a composition (Al.sub.1xCr.sub.x)N, where x=0.20 to the second sublayer has an average thickness of 0.1 to 2 m, has a composition (Al.sub.1-a-bCr.sub.aSi.sub.b)N where a=0.20 to 0.60, b=0.01 to 0.20, and has a repeated variation in Si content with an average interval of 1 to 100 nm between local minima and local maxima, the average local maximum and minimum are each within a specific range; and the diffraction peaks of the 111 and 200 diffraction peaks each have a predetermined full width at half maximum and a peak intensity.