The work aims to reveal the influence of N2 flow ratio on the structure and properties of Zr-B-N thin films and further strengthen the nano-composite Zr-B-N films by supplementing the metal ions during the reaction deposition, increasing the amount of metal nitride hard phases in the films and optimizing the preparation process of Zr-B-N thin films. Coating technique of high power impulse magnetron sputtering and pulsed direct current magnetron sputtering was adopted to despoit Zr-B-N films. X-ray diffractometer, energy spectrometer, scanning electronic microscope, nanoindenter, scratch tester, and tribometer were used to study the influence of N2 flow ratio on the composition, microstructure, mechanical properties, and tribological performance of Zr-B-N thin films. Zr-B-N films possessed the typical nano-composite structure, namely that the ZrB2, Zr3N4, Zr2N, ZrN nanocrystalline were surrounded by BN amorphous phase and all the Zr-B-N films exhibited (100) orient preferred growth. With the increase of N2 flow rate, the diffraction peak width on (100) lattice face increased dramatically, but the film hardness decreased from 36.2 GPa to 21.0 GPa. The adhesion between the film and substrate became better and better and the critical load increased gradually from 34.8 N to 55.8 N. The friction coefficient also increased, but it was kept a low value of 0.48 as the N2 flow ratio was 42.9%. ZrN phase growing along (220) lattice plane in the thin films could effectively reduce the friction. The Zr-B-N film possesses typical nano-composite structure and good performance when the N2 flow ratio is 42.9%.