In the last 50 years, lead-contained solder materials have been the most popular interconnect materials used in the electronics industry. Recently, lead-free solders are about to replace lead-contained solders for preventing environmental pollutions. However, the reliability of lead-free solders is not yet satisfactory. Several researchers reported that lead-contained solders have a good fatigue property. The others published that the lead-free solders have a longer thermal fatigue life. In this paper, the reason for the contradictory results published on the estimation of fatigue life of lead-free solder is investigated. In the present study, fatigue behavior of 63Sn37Pb, and two types of lead-free solder joints were compared using pseudo-power cycling testing method, which provides more realistic load cycling than chamber cycling method does. Pseudo-power cycling test was performed in various temperature ranges to evaluating the shear strain effect. A nonlinear finite element model was used to simulate the thermally induced visco-plastic deformation of solder ball joint in BGA packages. It was found that lead-free solder joints have a good fatigue property in the small temperature range condition. That condition induce small strain amplitude. However in the large temperature range condition, lead-contained solder joints have a longer fatigue life.