The paper is concerned with plastic flow in the port and welding chamber of rectangular hollow section extrusion through the porthole die. The extrusion process is analyzed by numerical simulation and experiments in the unsteady state. The effects of types of inlet with and without taper on the flow and extrusion load are mainly discussed and compared by FEA and experiments. Experiments are carried out by using the plasticine as a model material at room temperature. To visualize the plastic flow in the extrusion process, some split dies and punches are designed and manufactured by EDM. The theoretical predictions by FEM are reasonable agreements with experimental results on the deformed configurations and welding lines.