Drill processing is essential in various industries, such as automobiles and aviation. Carbide is mainly used for drilling, but cermet is also one of the most used materials. Since cermet has low reactivity with iron and low reactivity at high temperatures, excellent surface roughness can be obtained. However, experimental research comparing the performance of carbide and cermet drills is lacking. The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in the cutting characteristics of cermet and carbide tools. The experimental conditions were feed rates of 150, 200, 250, and 300 ㎜/min and 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 revolutions per minute. S45C was used as the workpieces. In this study, surface roughness, inner diameter, and spindle load were derived as experimental results and used as indicators to evaluate the performance of carbide and cermet drills. The results showed that the performance of the cermet drill was superior to that of the carbide drill.