The invention discloses a system and a method for monitoring state of an escalator. The system comprises a signal sensing sub system, a data acquisition sub system and a monitoring and diagnosing main system, wherein the signal sensing sub system is used for obtaining state information, in an operation process, of the escalator; the data acquisition sub system is used for acquiring and obtaining corresponding original state information after pre-processing the obtained state information, and storing the original state information; and the monitoring and diagnosing main system is used for carrying out online monitoring, early-warning and alarm processing after carrying out analysis and feature extraction on the original state information to obtain a real-time state feature vector, and carrying out self-learning type intelligent diagnosing and fault predicating on the state feature vector by combining with historical fault data and/or expert knowledge base. The system can be used for realizing comprehensive online monitoring of the escalator, can be used for accurately carrying out intelligent diagnosing and fault predicating, and can be widely applied to the monitoring industry of the escalators, moving sidewalks and elevators.