2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method is routinely practiced for the assessment of antioxidant activity of compounds and their mixtures. The method is based on the spectrophotometric measurement of DPPH· concentration that changes resulting from the DPPH radical reaction with an antioxidant. The amount of remaining DPPH· in the examined system is a measure of the antioxidant activity of compounds. Our study aims at exploring the antioxidant properties of Justicia adhatoda leaf extract and comparing the results in terms of effective concentration which scavenges 50 % radical (EC50). The correlation of the activities for both cold and Soxhlet methanolic extracts is reported with DPPH assay. The antioxidant capacity of the methanolic extract derived by two different methods is positively correlated. Correlation between antioxidant capacity and phenolic content of methanolic extract in both the cases indicates the efficiency of the extraction procedure. Positive correlation and p value <0.05 validate the efficiency of the procedures and results. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.