Abstract This paper discusses the effect of femtosecond laser parameters on Invar36, and the efficiency of reflecting diffraction gratings on the alloy. Several gratings were made with different laser parameters in two regimes: constant repetition rates and constant average laser power on the Invar surface. The efficiency of diffraction gratings is measured in an off-plane configuration by determining the power of diffracted points. With the constant average power technique, an increase in laser influence decreased the ablation depth of lines and increased the line widths. The discoloration of line edges from increasing the laser influence more than 0.57 J / cm 2 decreased the grating efficiency by over 49%. It was also found that increasing the repetition rate enhanced the grating efficiency and increasing the average power decreased the efficiency. In addition, the ablation threshold of Invar is 0.122 J / cm 2 when the number of pulses (NOP) equals 389.