To investigate the influence of loading rate and confining pressure on the mechanical behavior and energy evolution characteristics of hard and soft rock, high strength sandstone and low strength granite were subjected to triaxial compression tests with different loading rates. The results show that significant differences exist in the stress-strain curves for sandstone and granite. The confining pressure has a significant effect on the stress-strain curve, while the loading rate has a smaller effect on the stress-strain curve. As the confining pressure increases, the peak axial strain, peak axial stress, total energy, elastic energy and dissipated energy of sandstone and granite increase, the proportion of dissipated energy to total energy of sandstone and the proportion of elastic energy to total energy of granite are reduced. As the loading rate goes up, the peak axial stress, total energy and elastic energy increase in both sandstone and granite. The ultimate failure pattern of sandstone is a typical single inclined plane shear failure, while the ultimate failure pattern of granite consists of a single inclined plane shear failure and a vertical split failure. The loading rate has no significant effect on the macroscopic failure pattern, the elastic and dissipated energies are proportional to the total energy of sandstone and granite.