We studied the degradation of vanillic acid in soil was studied by high performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography. Illumina MISEQ high-throughput sequencing was used to identify the abundance of bacteria and fungi in soil. The results showed that when the concentration of vanillic acid decreased to a certain level in the soil, its degradation rate became slow. The application of vanillic acid gradually decreased the total number of bacterial OTUs in soil, while the total number of fungal OTUs increased. At the same time, the richness and diversity of bacteria were always higher than fungi. Key microbial taxa at different degradation stages of vanillic acid were identified at the phylum and genus level, including bacteria (<i>Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Methylibium, Methylobacillus, Aeromicrobium, Pseudonocardia</i>) and Fungi (<i>Ascomycota, Zygomycota, Basidiomycota, Rhodotorula, Mortierella