[Objective] The aims of this paper was to evaluate the benefits of urban land use accurately and to grasp their changing rules under the rapid economic development so as to judging whether they affected the cities' sustainable development. [Methods] The benefits evaluation system of urban land use in Yantai City was established from three respects, which were regional economic benefit, social benefit and ecological benefit. Then the weight method of mean squared deviation was used in the evaluation model.[Results] The benefits of urban land use in Yantai City had been improved during 2001-2010, which indicated that the land use intensity had been enhanced and the land use patterns had been gradually transformed from scale expansion to connotation potential. But comprehensive benefit in Yantai City, especially economic benefit and social benefit, was still much lower than that in other coastal open cities. [Conclusion] The weight method of mean squared deviation is an ideal method in the evaluation of urban land use benefits, and there is still a long way for Yantai City to improve its social and economic benefits in urban land use.