Lateritic nickel ore is used for producing of ferronickel. Nickel grade in ferronickel ranged from 20–40%. Ferronickel is commonly used to manufacture stainless steel. A new method that can increase the levels of nickel grade is selective reduction, which is a process to reduce the metal oxide to the metallic phase with the addition of additives. In this work, the selective reduction of limonitic nickel ore was carried out by add the 5 wt%, 10 wt%, and 15 wt% of reductant and the 10 wt% of sulfur as additive. The process of selective reduction is performed at temperatures of 950, 1050, and 1150°C with the duration of processs of 60, 90, and 120 minutes, followed by magnetic separation to separate between the concentrate and tailings. The characterization used AAS, XRD, and SEM-EDS for grade and recovery; phases transformation; and the microstructure analysis. The optimum of the grade and recovery of nickel was obtained at a temperature of 1050°C with the duration of process of 60 minutes and 5 wt% of reductant and 10 wt% of additive, which obtain 3.72 wt% and 95.67%. The metal grade and recovery was increase with the increasing of temperature reduction. Nevertheless, too long of the duration of process and too many reductant addition resulted in negative effect on selective reduction of lateritic nickel ore. Highest recovery could get more nickel in the process. And sulfur has the important rules when the selective reduction has been done on the increasing nickel content, the forming of FeS, and decreasing the grain size of ferronickel according to the microstructure in the SEM images around ~30 µm.