Based on the fact that China's current research on the advanced analysis of steel frame focuses on capacity limit state, this paper uses traditional first order calculation method, second-order simplified calculation method and second-order accurate calculation method to calculate the lateral deformation of a 2-bay 15-story steel frame and obtains the peak drift and inter-story drift of the steel frame in the three methods. The drift results were compared, the study was carry out on the influence of the lateral deformation and the drift limit of steel frame under serviceability limit state when considering second-order effect. The results have shown that, for the steel frame considering second-order effect, the lateral deformation of the structure increased significantly, and the peak drift and the inter-story drift when considering second-order effect,are much bigger than those in traditional first order calculation method. For the structure design considering second-order effect, if we still use the drift limit of our country's current design code, the amount of steel will increase significantly. Compared with second-order accurate calculation method, the second-order simplified calculation method has good accuracy and can be used to calculate the second-order drift of the steel frame.