The trap binding energy is an important parameter to understand the behavior of hydrogen in metals. Unfortunately, a reliable and practical method to calculate the hydrogen trap binding energy of austenitic stainless steels (gamma-SS) is still lacking. In this work, the validity of local equilibrium model (LEM) for simulating the hydrogen desorption spectrum of gamma-SS is studied first. Results show that LEM can be used to calculate the hydrogen thermal desorption spectrum of gamma-SS reliably when the specimen thickness and heating rate are small enough. Then, an effective hydrogen pre-discharging method is used to simplify the numerical fitting of hydrogen desorption spectrum, and a method to calculate the hydrogen trap binding energy in gamma-SS is developed using LEM. Finally, the hydrogen trap binding energy of dislocation in S30408 is calculated to be 26.3 kJ/mol on the basis of experimental hydrogen thermal desorption spectrum using the developed method. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.