At present, most of the magnetic bearing system adopts the classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control strategy. However, the external disturbances, system parameter perturbations, and many other uncertain disturbances result in PID controller difficult to achieve high performance. To solve this problem, a linear active disturbance rejection controller (LADRC) based on active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) theory was designed for magnetic bearing. According to the actual prototype parameters, the simulation model was built in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The step and sinusoidal disturbances with PID and LADRC control strategies were simulated and compared. Then, the experiments of step and sinusoidal disturbances were performed. When control parameters are consistent, the experiment showed that the rotor displacement fluctuation decreased by 28.6% using the LADRC than PID control under step disturbances and decreased by around 25.8% under sinusoidal disturbances. When the rotor is running at 24,000 r/min and 27,000 r/min, the displacement of rotor is reduced by around 15% and 13.7%, respectively. Rotate the rotor with step disturbances and sinusoidal disturbances. It can also be seen that LADRC has the advantages of fast response time and good anti-interference. The experiments indicate that the LADRC has better anti-interference performance compared with PID controller.