The article presents the basic parameters characterizing the abrasive water jet cutting, such as: water pressure (pw), cutting speed (vf), abrasive mass flow rate (ma) and the distance between forming nozzle and the cut material (l). Each of the mentioned parameters of the cutting process has been described in a separate subsection. The authors of the article focused primarily on the aspects related to the possibility of achieving maximum efficiency of the machining process while maintaining the assumed quality of cutting for individual cutting parameters. A detailed analysis of the topic was enabled the authors own research and an available literature on this subject. A closer understanding of the phenomena accompanying the abrasive waterjet cutting (AWJ) process and obtaining characteristics that would describe the influence of the tested output parameters in the function of input parameters will enable optimization of AWJ cutting process.