For efficient fingerprint matching, we propose to combine the advantage of exclusive and continuous fingerprint classification. We develop two combined fingerprint classification methods. The first method classifies a fingerprint into arch, left loop, right loop, tented arch and whorl, then performs a continuous fingerprint classification in each class using the global rotation of the ridge flows or the distances between core points and delta points. The second method first classifies a fingerprint into arch, left loop, right loop and whorl using the direction image around the reference point and then performs a continuous fingerprint classification in each class using the FingerCode. Both methods can reduce fingerprint search time by nearly 95%.