The potential antioxidant activities of methanolic extracts from soybean and rice fermented with Monascus sp. were investigated. M. pilosus IFO 480 and M. anka IFO 478 were screened as a suitable strain to promote the antioxidant activities in soybean- and rice- fermentation. The methanol extracts from soybean and rice after fermenting for 20 days at $30^{circ}C$ resulted in a significant increase in the antioxidant capacities expressed as radical (ABTS and DPPH) scavenging assay and peroxidation inhibition (%) by thiocyanate method and increased (p<0.01) by a 2.6 to 3.1-fold compared with those of the unfermented products. The average antioxidant potentials of Monascus-fermented soybean extracts (MFSE) were significantly (p<0.01) stronger than Monascus-fermented rice extracts (MFRE). A linear correlations between free radical scavenging activity of MFSE and the total phenolics content (r=0.84) and total flavonoids content (r=0.81) were observed. These results indicated that MFSE exhibited stronger (p<0.01) antioxidant activity and contained significantly higher levels (p<0.05) of phenolics than MFRE.