FeZrN thin films with in-plane anisotropy were deposited on both rigid substrate Si and flexible substrate Kapton by magnetron sputtering. The as-prepared films had the microstructure of nanocrystallites with a small amount of intergranular amorphous phase. The thickness dependent coercivity showed different behaviors for flexible and rigid films. The dynamic magnetic properties of the films have been characterized. Although the high frequency characteristics are closely related to the thickness, composition, and anisotropy, the flexible films have relatively smaller values of real permeability but larger values of ferromagnetic resonance frequency fr than the rigid films. Due to the flexibility, the properties of the flexible films varied with each other. Nevertheless, both rigid and flexible films can find important applications in microwave absorber due to their excellent high frequency properties up to 5 GHz. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3337684