Understanding the vertical distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) is of great significance for precisely assessing SOC storage. In this paper, data from 169 samples of 40 typical soil profiles in the plains areas of Beijing were excavated in the field and analyzed to investigate the vertical distribution characteristics of SOC. The results showed:1) The average SOC content in the 0-150 cm depth in the plains areas of Beijing was 5.98 ±2.62 g/kg. SOC content gradually decreased with depth, and the rate of decrease in the shallow (≤ 60 cm) SOC was significantly faster than that in deep (> 60 cm) SOC. The average SOC contents in the depths of 0-20, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80, 80-100 cm and 100-150 cm were 8.49, 6.47, 4.78, 4.94, 4.61 g/kg and 3.87 g/kg, respectively. 2) The differences in the SOC of different soil textures at different profile layers generally showed that the higher the proportion of powder and clay content, namely, the more viscous the texture, the higher the content of SOC. 3) The trend of average SOC contents along different soil profile configuration patterns was sand-sand-sand < loam-loam-loam < loam-loam-clay < loam-clay-loam. The average SOC of sand-sand-sand was significantly lower than that of the other soil profile configurations, and its vertical variation was relatively gentle. The SOC content of loam-loam-clay showed a vertical trend of "decline-rise-decline", while the SOC content of loam-loam-loam and loam-clay-loam showed a trend of rapid decrease and then slight decrease. 4) The average SOC contents of cultivated land and orchard land were higher than that of grassland, and the cultivated land in each profile level ranked the first among the three kinds of land use types. The SOC content of cultivated land and orchard land decreased by 40.10% and 55.92%, respectively, between the depths of 0-20 cm and 40-60 cm, and the rate of decrease slowed down significantly in the profile depths deeper than 60 cm. Compared with the cultivated land and orchard land, which were more directly affected by human activities, the SOC contents of grassland changed relatively gently in the vertical direction.