This paper studies the containment control problem for a class of fractional order nonlinear multiagent systems in the presence of arbitrary switchings, unmeasured states, and quantized input signals by a hysteresis quantizer. Under the framework of the Lyapunov function theory, this paper proposes an event-triggered adaptive neural network dynamic surface quantized controller, in which dynamic surface control technology can avoid “explosion of complexity” and obtain fractional derivatives for virtual control functions continuously. Radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs) are used to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions, and an observer is designed to obtain the unmeasured states. The proposed distributed protocol can ensure all the signals remain semi-global uniformly ultimately bounded in the closed-loop system, and all followers can converge to the convex hull spanned by the leaders’ trajectory. Utilizing the combination of an event-triggered scheme and quantized control technology, the controller is updated aperiodically only at the event-sampled instants such that transmitting and computational costs are greatly reduced. Simulations compare the event-triggered scheme without quantization control technology with the control method proposed in this paper, and the results show that the event-triggered scheme combined with the quantization mechanism reduces the number of control inputs by 7% to 20%.