In this article, we first obtain, for the Kolmogorov distance, an error bound between a tempered stable and a compound Poisson distribution (CPD) and also an error bound between a tempered stable and an α-stable distribution via Stein’s method. For the smooth Wasserstein distance, an error bound between two tempered stable distributions (TSDs) is also derived. As examples, we discuss the approximation of a TSD to normal and variance-gamma distributions (VGDs). As corollaries, the corresponding limit theorem follows.