Abstract: Empirical analyses of efficiency of inland ports are performed by means of the three-stage DEA model with the data from 7 major inland ports along the Yangtse River in 2013-2018. The analysis indicates that in general, the comprehensive efficiency of the major ports was going up, but still not up to the standard. The cause of that was high input redundancy and resource-wasting. There were differences among the ports. The efficiencies of ports at the upstream and downstream of the river were relatively high while the ports along the middle reach of the river performed with rather low efficiency. Fluctuation of the comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency were seen after compensation of the impact of environment change and random factors. The measures to overcome existing problems are proposed.