Abstract Abrasive belt grinding has become widely used in industries due to its virtues of flexibility, applicability, and cost-efficiency. However, the relative grinding direction, namely up or down grinding, has often been overlooked and unclear on the grinding process. Thus, this paper implemented an experimental comparative analysis between up and down face grinding, studying grinding ratio, surface roughness and surface residual stress. The results indicated that the down grinding provided less material removal but with a higher grinding ratio. The grinding ratio of down grinding (Rdg) was always larger than that of the up grinding (Rug), and their ratio (Rdg/Rug) rose along with processing time, implying the down grinding with increasingly high grinding efficiency. The up grinding induced higher Ra, Rsm, and Rq because of the deeper indentation of approximately conical abrasives. As for residual stresses in the external surface layer, σ11 of the up grinding was on average 2.23 times as large as that of the down grinding, both in the form of compressive residual stresses. The multi-abrasive scratching finite element modeling (FEM) discussed the influence of plastic flow on residual stress distribution on the ground surface.