The Jinghe River Basin is an important grain-producing area in northwest China; yet, serious soil erosion and water shortage problems have greatly limited the development of agriculture in the region. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of rational water resources planning and water cycle mechanism exploration; yet, studies in this region have mainly focused on rainfall and runoff sand transport, neglecting the role of ET. Therefore, to understand the characteristics of ET in the Jinghe River basin, we estimated the ET during the vegetation growing season (April to October) in 2018 using the surface energy balance system (SEBS) based on remote sensing images and meteorological data, and analyzed the characteristics of its spatio-temporal distribution and its relationship with environmental factors. The results showed that (1) SEBS has good applicability in the study area, with R¹ between 0.57 and 0.77, RMSE between 0.98 and 1.15  mm  /  d, and MRE between 24% and 36% as verified with the lysimeter and ET products; (2) on the basin scale, the average daily ET showed a unimodal distribution with time, with variations ranging from 1.6 to 4.1 mm while spatially it showed that the mountainous forest and river catchment areas were overall higher than the loess plateau and hilly gully areas; (3) on the landscape scale, the vegetation with the highest average daily ET was broad-leaved forest, and the lowest was grassland. The vegetation with the highest ecological water demand was cultivated vegetation, and the lowest was meadow; (4) correlation analysis showed that rainfall, temperature, sunshine hours, and vegetation cover were positively correlated with ET. Among them, rainfall and temperature have the strongest correlation with ET and maybe the main factors affecting ET in the Jinghe River Basin.