The laser cladding technology was used to prepare the coating on the surface of 45 steel by adding different content of La2O3 into 304L powder. The microstructure, phase composition, microhardness, friction and wear properties of the coatings with different contents of La2O3 were compared. The results show that rare earth can accelerate the fluidity of molten pool, increase the compactness of microstructure, improve the hardness of cladding layer, and reduce the friction coefficient and wear loss. The results show that the coating with 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5%(mass fraction) La2O3 has the best performance, the grain structure is finer and more uniform, the average hardness is increased by 20.6%, and the friction coefficient and wear loss are decreased by 14.2% and 24.9%, respectively.