Corrosion experiments and theoretical calculations were performed to investigate the inhibition mechanism of indazole (IA) and 5-aminoindazole (AIA) for copper in NaCl solution. The results obtained from weight loss and electrochemical experiments are in good agreement, and reveal that these compounds are high-efficiency inhibitors with inhibition efficiency order: AIA > IA, which was further confirmed by field emission scanning electronic microscope (FESEM) observation. Besides, the quantum chemical calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation showed that both studied inhibitors are adsorbed strongly on the copper surface in parallel mode. The adsorption of these molecules on copper substrate was found to obey Langmuir isotherm. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.