The aim of this study was to investigate the antitumor effect of lycorine hydrochloride (LH) and discuss the correlation between LH-induced apoptosis and autophagy in the human colorectal cancer cell line HCT116. Here the results by the Cell Counting Kit-8 and colony formation assays showed that LH concentration-dependently decreased cell viability and colony formation in HCT116 cells, suggesting inhibition of cell proliferation by LH. By flow cytometry, LH was found to increase apoptotic rate in HCT116 cells. Mechanistically, Western blot results revealed that LH increased the expression of the protein of Bax and Caspase-3, and decreased Bcl-2 proteins expression. Moreover, the reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analysis also showed that LH increased the expression of Beclin-1 and LC3B-II/LC3B-I ratio, indicating that autophagy was induced by LH. LH induced autophagy via downregulating phospho-mammalian target of rapamycin and upregulating phospho-AMPK (5 ' adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase). Furthermore, to understand the role of LH-induced autophagy and its association with apoptosis, cells were analyzed after Beclin-1 small interfering RNA transfection. The results indicated that the proapoptotic ability of LH was increased by inhibition of autophagy. In conclusion, the present investigation suggested that LH induced apoptosis and autophagy in HCT116 cells via the mitochondrial and AMPK/mTOR pathways. The suppression of autophagy promoted LH-induced apoptosis by modulating Beclin-1 and Bcl-2.