The invention discloses a screening method for key geometric errors of a forming gear grinding machine based on a gear surface error model. The screening method comprises the following steps that step1, a gear surface error model is established, specifically, step 11, geometric errors are defined, step 12, the geometric errors are considered, and the pose transformation between a grinding wheel coordinate system and a gear coordinate system is calculated; and step 13, according to a forming conjugate grinding principle, the gear surface error model is established; and step 2, the key geometric errors which affect the grinding precision of a gear are screened, specifically, step 21, according to the gear surface error model, a first-order sensitivity index is used for representing the contribution rate of a single parameter to a model output variance, and a higher-order sensitivity index is used for representing the contribution rate of the coupling effect of multiple parameters to themodel output variance; meanwhile, the individual effect of the single parameter and the coupling effect with other parameters are considered, and a global sensitivity index is used for representing the comprehensive contribution rate of the parameter to the model output variance; and step 22, a modified Sobol method is adopted, and the first order sensitivity index and the global sensitivity index are calculated based on Monte-Carlos estimated valves.