Steels are the most common materials used in industry for high performance applications and, thus, are in focus of numerous studies. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is an increasing interest in additively manufactured tool parts, e.g. drills and mold inserts with integrated cooling channels, in recent years. Most studies on this topic focus on parts and microstructures, respectively, manufactured based on laser-based AM technologies. Investigations on such materials processed by electron-based AM technologies are still lacking in open literature. Electron beam powder bed fusion (PBF-EB) -a powder bed-based process using an electron beam for local melting of the powder- offers several process inherent advantages for such kind of materials. In particular, the electron beam can be defocused and deflected at high speed to heat up the powder bed up to 1000 °C, eventually resulting in slow cooling rates and, thus, in different phase compositions and a higher ductility and damage tolerance compared to parts manufactured by laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB). The present work highlights and discusses results obtained for steels processed by PBF-EB. Especially, process induced microstructures and mechanical properties were investigated. Advanced characterization techniques such as high-resolution microscopy including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) were employed and mechanical properties were assessed by means of nanoindentation analysis as well as quasi static and cyclic loading. The results clearly reveal that PBF-EB is highly promising for manufacturing complex parts made of tool steels. Amongst others the fatigue strength reaches significantly higher levels as reported for PBF-LB processed counterparts.