At present, the validities of many detecting methods for harmonic current of single-phase active power filter (APF) are verified by simulation but without experiments. To solve this problem, a simple practical experimental detecting system for harmonic current of APF is obtained by UA206 A/D data collecting block being joined with computer by PCI port and supply power voltage and load current being regarded as input signals. The system has the characteristics of simple configuration, nice stability, high reliability and easy programmer. Using this system, the experiment of a detecting method for harmonic current based on neural networks is done, and it validates that adopting the system can expediently verify the correctness and detecting performance of the proposed detecting method for harmonic current of APF.