Aiming at the problems of high energy consumption and low efficiency caused by the single working mode of the traditional electro-hydraulic control system, an independent metering multi-mode switching control system was proposed. The system was based on independent metering control. By changing the traditional hydraulic circuit connection method, it expanded a variety of energy-saving working modes for the system and a multi-mode switching controller was designed. The controller first switched the system to the energy-optimized working mode according to the load direction and speed direction, and then configured the best valve control strategy for the actuator inlet and outlet according to the working mode, and the pump control method adopted the electro-hydraulic load-sensing method to adapt the system pressure to the load pressure. To verify the energy-saving effects of the system in terms of outlet pressure loss and energy regeneration, the traditional electro-hydraulic load-sensing system was used as a comparison object, and experiments were carried out on a small excavator to evaluate the energy efficiency improvement. The experimental results proved that compared with the traditional electro-hydraulic load-sensing system, the independent metering multi-mode switching control method can effectively improve the energy efficiency of the system without reducing the motion tracking performance, and the energysaving rate was 21.95%.