A substrate inspection method includes the following steps. Substrates are sequentially moved while an optical system including a light-projecting system and a light-receiving system are moved in a direction orthogonal to the moving direction of each substrate, so as to change the scanned area of each substrate which is scanned with an inspection light having a specific width in the direction orthogonal to the moving direction of the substrate from the light-projecting system; data of the inspected defects of the substrates in the scanned areas are stored for each scanned area; and the stored data of the defects of the substrates in the scanned areas are updated with newly inspected data of the defects of the substrates in the same scanned areas for each substrate, and defect data of one substrate are produced based on the data of the defects of the substrates in a plurality of scanned areas.