Both corrosion and abrasion remove materials from some engineering components such as impact coal crusher hammers, pulverizer rings, chute liner, and rolls or molds. Intensive research has been done on improving the wear resistance of high chromium alloys, however, studies into corrosion resistance of high chromium alloys are insufficient. In order to determine the amount of ferroniobium addition in the wire to achieve the best corrosion resistance, and find out the mechanism of ferroniobium enhancing the corrosion resistance of the welding overlays, the high-Cr iron-based welding overlays with different niobium addition were fabricated by using self-made self-shielded metal-cored wires and their acidic corrosion resistance in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution + 0.01 mol/L HCl solution were investigated by electrochemical corrosion test. The microstructure and corrosion morphology were characterized by OM, SEM, XRD and EDS. The polarization curves and values of I _corr, E _corr and Rc indicate the corrosion resistance is at the highest with 3.6 wt.% niobium addition, and at the lowest when the niobium addition is 10.8 wt.%. The corrosion of welding overlay occurs in the matrix of microstructure. With the increase of niobium addition from 3.6 wt.% to 10.8 wt.%, the proportion of network eutectic structure in the welding overlay is increased. Up to 10.8 wt.%, the microstructure is transformed from hypereutectic structure into eutectic one, leading to a higher acceleration of corrosion rate. When niobium addition reaches 14.4 wt.%, the welding overlay is transformed into a hypoeutectic structure. The addition of niobium element consumes carbon element in the alloy, which makes the increase of chromium content in the final solidified matrix, leading to an improvement in corrosion resistance.