Abstract: Single-pass isothermal compression tests (compression to true strain of 0.69) were conducted on forged 304L austenitic stainless steel with a thermal simulation equipment at different deformation temperatures (900–1 200 °C) and different strain rates (0.01–10 s⁻¹), and the hot deformation behavior was studied. The strain compensated Arrhenius model and modified Johnson-Cook (JC) model considering deformation temperature, strain rate and true strain were established for test steel compression, and the prediction accuracy of the two models was compared. The results show that with the increase of deformation temperature, the dynamic recrystallization of test steel became more complete, and was basically complete when the deformation temperature was 1 200 °C, with the formation of many twins. At the deformation temperature of 900–1050 ℃ and the strain rate of 1,5 s⁻¹, the flow stress tended be stable after the strain increased to a certain value due to the synergistic effect of dynamic recrystallization and dynamic recovery. At the deformation temperature of 900–1 200 °C and the deformation rate of 0.01, 0.1, 10 s⁻¹ and at the deformation temperature of 1 100–1 200 °C and the deformation rate of 1,5 s⁻¹, with the increase of strain, the flow stress increased first, reached the peak value and then decreased,showing the characteristics of dynamic recrystallization type. The absolute values of average relative errors of the flow stress predicted by the strain compensated Arrhenius model and the modified JC model and test results were 4.916% and 7.648%, and the correlation coefficients were 0.993 41 and 0.985 24, respectively; the prediction accuracy of the strain compensated Arrhenius model was higher.