Development of predictive capabilities of forming failure can help not only to reduce the experimental effort of formability characterization but also to accelerate the development of new or improved sheet metal alloys. This paper presents a comparative study on prediction of failures in sheet metals which leads to undesirable localized straining and/or fracture during the stamping process. The theoretical diffuse and localized necking models were applied. Several classical fracture criteria were also studied in the finite element analysis. All these models were used to predict the onset of failure and compare with the experimental cases. Comparison and validity of different failure criteria was discussed.