Mechanical properties and residual stresses of friction stir welded and autogenous tungsten inert gas welded structural steel butt welds have been studied. Friction stir welding (FSW) of structural steel butt joints has been carried out by in-house prepared tungsten carbide tool with 20 mm/ min welding speed and 931 rpm tool rotation. Tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding of the butt joints was carried out with welding current, arc voltage and the welding speed of 140 amp, 12 V and 90 mm/min respectively. Residual stress measurement in the butt welds has been carried out in weld fusion zone and heat affected zone (HAZ) by using blind hole drilling method. The magnitude of longitudinal residual stress along the weld line of TIG welded joints were observed to be higher than friction stir welded joint. In both TIG and FSW joints, the nature of longitudinal stress in the base metal was observed to be compressive whereas in HAZ was observed to be tensile. It can be stated that butt welds produced with FSW process had residual stress much lower than the autogenous TIG welds.