In order to explore the water consumption and productivities of various cropping systems to judge the potential of North China Plain in terms of alleviating the groundwater overexploitation, a comparative experiment of the water consumption and productivity of three cropping systems (winter wheat-summer maize system, winter wheat-summer soybean system and winter wheat-summer fallow system) was carried out at Shunyi Experimental Station of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences from 2021 to 2022. A large-scale weighing lysimeter was used to measure the evapotranspiration, soil water storage and leakage and the dual crop coefficient method recommended by FAO-56 was used to estimate the evapotranspiration of different cropping systems. The estimation effect and the response characteristics of evapotranspiration to the environment were analyzed and the relationship between water use efficiency (WUE), yield and benefit of different cropping systems were compared. The results showed that evapotranspiration had an exponential relationship with net radiation, a parabolic relationship with temperature and a linear relationship with vapor pressure deficit, indicating that the FAO-56 dual crop coefficient method and nonlinear fitting formula could be used to estimate the evapotranspiration of the three cropping systems precisely. The winter wheat-summer maize system consumed the highest water with the groundwater consumption of 197.52 mm, though it achieved the highest yield, WUE and EWUE, whereas the groundwater consumption of the winter wheat-summer fallow system was 72.28% lower than that in the winter wheat-summer maize system. In the future, it is necessary to consider the availability of surface water and groundwater, as well as the soil water storage capacity when selecting the optimal cropping systems in different regions of the North China Plain, so as to improve crop management methods to achieve the balance of groundwater exploitation and replenishment.