As main material for supercapacitor electrodes, porous carbon has the advantages of good electrical conductivity, high chemicalstability and wide range of operating temperature. In this paper, porous carbon materials were prepared by chemical activation using Inner Mongolia coal tar pitch (CTP) as raw material, K2CO3 and KOH as the activators respectively. The preparation process conditionswere optimized, and the differences in structure and electrochemical performance of the porous carbon prepared by the two activatorswere compared. The results show that the optimal preparation conditions for K2CO3 and KOH activation are both activation temperature of700 ℃ activation time of 60 min, and mass ratio of activator to CTP of 2 ∶ 1. There are significant differences in the microstructure of porous carbon prepared by the two activators. The surface of porous carbon (PH-T700) prepared by KOH activation is flat and smooth, witha large number of regular circular pores distributed, but the porous carbon (PC-T700) obtained by K2CO3 activation shows a coral structure. Compared with PH-T700, PC-T700 has more mesopores and less ionic diffusion resistance. At a current density of 1 A/ g, the specific capacitance of PC-T700 and PH- T700 are 252.90 and 261.02 F/ g, respectively. PC-T700 and PH-T700 are assembled into buttontype symmetrical capacitors, with specific capacitance of 226.01 and 225.51 F/ g at 0.5 A/ g, respectively. PC-T700 shows better rate capability and cycling stability. After 5 000 times of charging and discharging, the specific capacitance of PC-T700 and PH-T700 are103.77% and 98.20% of the initial values, respectively. When power density reaches 1038.46 W/ kg, the energy density of PC-T700still maintains 7.5 Wh/ kg, which is higher than that of PH-T700.