The effect of hydrostatic pressure on the pit corrosion behavior of Fe-20Cr alloy was investigated in 3.5% NaCl solution by means of potentiodynamic polarization and potentiostatic technology, and the experiment data was analyzed based on stochastic theory. With the increase of hydrostatic pressure, the pit corrosion resistance of Fe-20Cr alloy was deteriorated, which was distinguished by the decrease of critical pit potential (E-cirt) and the increase of passive current density. The results also demonstrated that there exist two effects of hydrostatic pressure on the corrosion behavior of Fe-20Cr alloy: (1) the pit generation rate was evidently increased compared to that under lower hydrostatic pressure, and the metastable pits become faster and larger. However, it seemed that pit generation mechanism shows no hydrostatic pressure dependence; (2) the probability of pit growth increased with the increase of hydrostatic pressure, which implied that the metastable pit on Fe-20Cr alloy exhibited higher probability to become larger pit cavity during shorter time interval than that under lower hydrostatic pressure. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.