When he was eighteen years old, in 1676, he moved to Paris, to study under C. Antoine Coysevox, his maternal uncle, who presided over the recently established Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.

At the age of twenty-three, Coustou won the Colbert prize (the Prix de Rome), which entitled him to four years of education at the French Academy at Rome.

A number of his works were destroyed during the French Revolution; the most famous of those that remain are "La Seine at la Marne", the "Berger Chasseur", and "Daphne Pursued by Apollo" in the gardens of the Tuileries, the bas-relief "Le Passage du Rhin" in the Louvre, the statues of Julius Caesar and Louis XV in the Louvre, and the "Descent from the Cross" behind the choir altar of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.

Regularly, he worked closely with his brother, Guillaume Coustou, also a renowned sculptor and director of the academy.

His brother's son, Guillaume Coustou the Younger, also was a sculptor.