An upper-bound method is applied to the determination of forging load and deformed bulge profile during upset forging of cylindrical billets. A simple kinematically admissible velocity field which takes into account the dissimilar frictional conditions as well as the same frictional conditions at the top and bottom die surfaces is proposed for upset forging of cylindrical billets. From the proposed velocity field the upperbound load and the deformed profile are determined by minimizing the total power consumption with respect to two chosen parameters. Experiments are carried out with annealed AISI 1015 steel billets at room temperature for several frictional conditions. The theoretical predictions both in the forging load and the deformed profile are in good agreement with the experimental results.