The work aims to investigate the corrosion inhibition of imidazoline (IM) and imidazolidinyl urea (IU) for carbon steel in HCl solution. Weight loss method, electrochemical technique, surface analysis, functional group analysis and thermody-namic isothermal equation were used to study corrosion property and adsorption rule of corrosion inhibitors for Q235 carbon steel HCl solution at different temperature. In the weight loss test, as the corrosion inhibitor (IM , IU) was added at ambient temperature, the corrosion rate decreased from 12.54 mg/(cm2?h) to 5.132 and 0.145 mg/(cm2?h) respectively and the corrosion inhibition rate of corrosion inhibitors was 59.1% and 98.9% respectively. Furthermore, the corrosion inhibition efficiency decreased with the increase of temperature. From polarization curve test, the corrosion potential of two corrosion inhibitors was moving forward and the cathode current density decreased obviously as concentration increased. From the alternating current resistance test, with the increase of concentration, of the fitted parameter Rct increased and Cdl decreased. The corrosion inhibitors replaced water on the metal surface and were adsorbed to the film. The adsorption of the two corrosion inhibitors on metal surface obeyed the Langmuir isothermal adsorption equation. According to SEM and XPS analysis, the molecules of corrosion inhibitors could form covalent bonds with metal by N atom and could be adsorbed to the film on the metal surface. IM and IU have corrosion inhibition effects on carbon steel and IU has stronger inhibition effect. Both corrosion inhibitors are mixed type corrosion inhibitors and have high corrosion resistance to the cathode. The adsorption of these two compounds on the surface of carbon steel is spontaneous exothermic process and the adsorption rules are in accordance with the Langmuir isothermal adsorption which belongs to single molecular layer adsorption.