A comparative study of pile design is presented using Eurocode 7 and an expanded reliability - based design (RBDE) method that is recently developed by the authors. A design example that has been used in the literature to illustrate Eurocode 7 is re-designed using RBDE. The RBDE method gives designs that are consistent with the designs from Eurocode 7 or correspond to the target failure probability (pT) adopted in EN 1990. The RBDE method allows design engineers to adjust the design pT easily to accommodate the needs of a particular project without additional computational efforts. In addition, design engineers have the flexibility to make assumptions and/or simplifications deemed appropriate in designs. Such flexibility is illustrated by exploring the effect of different probability distributions of soil effective friction angle on design.