Abstract: Understanding the coupling effect on above- and below-ground species composition was important for exploring the succession process and its mechanism of degraded grasslands under grazing exclusion. The study respectively made the succession gradient analysis on vegetation and soil seed bank using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA) cluster analysis on the relationship between vegetation and soil seed bank in Stipa bungeana grasslands on the Loess Plateau. The results indicated that with grazing exclusion years increasing, S. bungeana grasslands had the following succession stages: the cluster growth of weeds→S. bungeana emerging in large numbers→the stable development of S. bungeana. The vegetation succession showed a clear positive direction, however, no clear trend in soil seed bank. The vegetation succession stages influenced the relationship between vegetation and soil seed bank. The similarity between vegetation and soil seed bank in early succession was higher than late-succession stages, indicating soil seed bank made a relatively larger contribution to vegetation restoration in early-succession stages. Overall, soil seed bank played a minimal role in the process of vegetation succession under the grazing exclusion in S. bungeana grasslands. Therefore, the internal driving forces of vegetation succession under grazing exclusion in typical steppe were propagule dispersal and asexual reproduction, not soil seed bank.