The ductility of High Performance Concrete (HPC) can develop both in tension and compression.This aspect is evidenced in the present paper by measuring the mechanical response of normalvibrated concrete (NC), self-compacting concrete (SC) and some HPCs cylindrical specimensunder uniaxial and triaxial compression. The post-peak behaviour of these specimens is definedby a non-dimensional function that relates the inelastic displacement and the relative stress duringsoftening. Both for NC and SC, the increase of the fracture toughness with the confinement stressis observed. Conversely, all the tested HPCs, even in absence of confinement, show practically thesame ductility measured in normal and self-compacting concretes with a confining pressure. Thus,the presence of HPC in compressed columns is itself sufficient to create a sort of active distributedconfinement.