The invention belongs to the technical field of design of shield tunneling machine cutters, in particular to a tapered cutter of a shield tunneling machine. The cutter, spokes and a shell-shaped tool rest form a tapered structure, and a cone-apex half angle alpha is less than or equal to arctanf, wherein alpha is the cone-apex half angle, and f is the static friction coefficient between the cutter of the shield tunneling machine and a boulder. The spokes are distributed uniformly, the number N of the spokes is an integer, A is the width of the spokes, B is less than min (L, W, H), and L, W, H are determined by geological exploration information, where L is the maximal size of the boulder above in the length direction, W is the maximal size of the boulder above in the width direction and H is the maximal size of the boulder above in the height direction. According to the scheme, the rigidity of the cutter is improved, the interaction between a tool and the boulder is lowered, and the working performance of a shield is effectively improved; furthermore, the energy consumption during boosting can be effectively reduced under the condition of the same tunneling quantity; and the working efficiency can be improved and the energy consumption can be reduced by about 5 percent respectively by preliminary estimation, so that the utilization rate of the shield tunneling machine is effectively improved.