Stainless steel exhibits high ductility and strain hardening capacity in comparison with carbon steel widely used in constructions. To analyze the particular behaviour of stainless steel cover-plate joints, an experimental study was conducted. It showed large ductility and complex failure modes of the joints. A non-linear finite element model was developed to predict the main parameters influencing the behaviour of these joints. The results of this deterministic model allow us to built a meta-model by using the quadratic response surface method, in order to allow for efficient reliability analysis. This analysis is then applied to the assessment of design formulae in the currently used codes of practice. The reliability analysis has shown that the stainless steel joint design according to Eurocodes leads to much lower failure probabilities than the Eurocodes target reliability for carbon steel, which incites revising the resisting model evaluation and consequently reducing stainless steel joint costs. This approach can be used as a basis to evaluate a wide range of steel joints involving complex failure modes, particularly bearing failure.