The surface characteristics of the powder particles play a key role on the processing of the powders to consolidated products and on the final properties achieved for the material. Characterization of surface oxide films by techniques like XPS and TEM EDS provide reliable information on the surface films, but they are time-consuming methods and the analyzed areas are extremely limited. In this evaluation, the potential of the depth profile analysis by Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (GD-OES) is experimented for Astaloy CrM and 316L powders. The conducted experiments show that the chemical composition and thickness of the surface oxides can be analyzed by GD-OES even for powder materials. Thus, the first results indicate that GD-OES provides a fast method to analyze the surface characteristics of a large number of powder particles during a single measurement.