Residual stresses in plasma-sprayed Al 2 O 3 and Cr 2 O 3 coatings, deposited using commercial powders, and in HVOF-sprayed ceramic coatings, deposited using conventional Al 2 O 3 and Cr 2 O 3 feedstock and nanostructured- Al 2 O 3 feedstock, were studied by combining X-ray diffraction, substrate chemical removal technique and analytical modelling. The in-situ curvature technique was also employed for HVOF-sprayed Al 2 O 3 coatings, for further verification. Both HVOF-sprayed Al 2 O 3 -based coatings display similar, tensile residual stresses (≈120 MPa) near the top surface and possess moderate through-thickness stress gradients (≈10 - 20 MPa). Plasma-sprayed Al 2 O 3 possesses a smaller through-thickness stress gradient and a larger near-surface stress (≈220 MPa): this latter result seems to be due to higher quenching stresses in APS Al 2 O 3 , as determined by analytical computation The analytical model is validated by its fairly good agreement to the experimental results obtained both by substrate chemical removal and by in-situ curvature. Cr 2 O 3 -based coatings possess a lower near-surface residual stress (≈20 MPa); the HVOF one also exhibits a very large stress gradient (≈80 MPa). Machining and sliding processes (like polishing and dry sliding tribological testing) change their surface residual stresses to compressive ones.