Scientifically compiling the spatial distribution map of ecosystem services is helpful to identify hot spots and vacancies of ecosystem services, and can provide basic information for homeland security planning. However, due to the lack of a unified and scientific classification method of ecosystem service capacity, the display effect and mapping efficiency of ecosystem service distribution maps are limited. Inappropriately hierarchical mapping will mislead decision-makers to judge spatial patterns of ecosystem services and increase the uncertainty of ecological protection decisions. Aiming at constructing classification standards of ecological service mapping, a 1:250000 scale mapping classification case study was conducted on the soil retention data of six typical counties in China. Four classification quality evaluation indicators, including the Accuracy of Classification, the Areal Equality, the Equality of Value Ranges of Classes and the Spatial Autocorrelation Consistency, are used to evaluate and compare five classification methods commonly used in maps of ecosystem services, which are the Natural Breaks, the Equal Interval, the Geometric Interval, the Cumulative Ratio and Quantile. The results show that the six counties have similar distribution of soil retention services: the low-value area has a large coverage area, but the high-value area has a small coverage area. There are differences in the optimal grading methods for soil retention service mapping among counties: the optimal grading method for Yanqing and Fengman is the Natural Breaks; the optimal grading method for Yongjing, Tianshan, and Anning is the Cumulative Ratio; for Fuyang, the Geometric Interval is the optimal. Among the various grading methods, the Cumulative Ratio has the best or near-optimal comprehensive mapping effect in 6 counties, and has the best applicability for describing the spatial patterns of soil retention service in each county properly. The classification criteria and results proposed in this paper can provide a scientific basis for standardization and automation of ecosystem soil retention service mapping.