Precipitation is an important source of water in desert steppe ecosystem, and is also an important driving factor of various biological processes on different spatial and temporal scales. In order to understand the response of desert steppe soil moisture to precipitation, this study took three typical land use patterns (natural grassland, shrub land and sandy land) in desert steppe as research objects to study the effect of precipitation events on soil moisture under different land use types. The results showed that precipitation in the study period was mainly small precipitation events less than 5 mm, accounting for 72% of the total. Judging from the precipitation rate, precipitation events less than 10 mm/h were the majority, reaching 86%. The average soil water content of 0~250 cm was highest in sandy land. The average soil water contents of shrub forest and natural grassland were almost equal, but the average soil water content of natural grassland fluctuated greatly. Under the three types of land use, the soil water content fluctuated greatly in the surface layer (<10 cm), while it was relatively stable in the deep (>80 cm). Compared with grassland and shrub land, the wet front of sand had the fastest response and the largest infiltration depth. Under the rainfall of 102.6 mm, the cumulative infiltration amount of natural grassland was the largest (7.36 mm), followed by sand (3.47 mm), and shrub land (2.64 mm). Therefore, from the point of view of maximum storage and effective utilization of precipitation resources, natural grassland should be a land use type worthy of selection during the ecological restoration and reconstruction of desert steppe.