Based on daily precipitation and average temperature data at 18 meteorological stations of Ningxia from 1981 to 2016, prefectural and municipal disaster situations and annual climate impact assessment reports, CI and MCI were used as drought monitoring indicators, and their differences of application on meteorological drought monitoring in Ningxia from three aspects of drought days, drought intensity and typical drought events were compared and their applicability was explored. The results show that the annual change trends of drought days with moderate level and above monitored by CI and MCI were consistent in the past 36-year in Ningxia, they presented decreasing trend as a whole, but the drought days monitored by CI were more than MCI, and their spatial distribution characteristics were different, to certain extent, especially in northern arid region. The change trends of drought intensity monitored by CI and MCI were basically same, but the drought intensity of CI was stronger than MCI, and the less precipitation was, the stronger drought intensity of CI was. For typical drought events, the drought intensity monitored by CI was strong, the beginning was early, the duration was long, and the jumping phenomenon between drought levels was obvious, which wasn’t accordance with the evolution characteristics of drought. The monitoring effect of MCI was more stable and better sustainability, but the drought intensity was lighter. The precipitation was generally less in Ningxia, it concentrated from May to September, and the evaporation was large. Considering the influence of precipitation previous 150-day, the drought intensity monitored by MCI was lighter than actual situation. On the whole, CI was more suitable to daily meteorological drought monitoring than MCI in Ningxia, but two indexes could reflect the temporal evolution characteristics of meteorological drought days and intensity in central and southern Ningxia.