The article is devoted to surface hardening of steels by alloying with the use of laser energy. Two combined technologies were proposed: first—laser alloying by nitride-forming elements followed by nitriding, and second—the local laser alloying followed by metallization in atmosphere of ammonia. It is shown that laser alloying in continuous radiation forms a layer with a homogeneous fine-grained structure with thickness of 600 microns. The subsequent nitriding increases the microhardness of the surface layer of low-carbon steels to 20,000 MPa, increases wear-resistance in a 3 - 15 times and crack resistance in a 1.5 times. Two-stage technology of metallization allows getting diffusion layer on the surface of steels with the thickness, which is 1.5 - 2 times higher than after traditional metallization. In addition, this method of surface modification can significantly reduce the temperature of diffusion metallization and reduce the processing time to 3 hours. The optimal regimes of both technologies, which provide homogeneous multiphase diffusion layers with high hardness and wear resistance, were determined.