The classical problem of assessing the bearing capacity of soil creates considerable interest even today as there are many uncertainties, the different theories present varying values of bearing capacity of soil and there have been many bearing capacity failures in practice. Considering the importance of this problem, in the present paper, an attempt has been made to use PLAXIS 2D, a finite element software popular in geotechnical engineering, to validate the results of bearing capacity of soil from classical Terzaghi’s theory. For this purpose, plane strain idealization is made and the soil is represented by Mohr Coulomb failure criteria. Convergence check and boundary effect are ensured as required in any numerical software. The bearing capacity of soil assessed from PLAXIS 2D was found to be well within the range obtained from Terzaghi’s bearing capacity theory. It was shown that the bearing capacity was influenced by factors such as cohesion, angle of internal friction, unit weight of soil, location of ground water table, inclination of ground, inclination of base of footing, etc. Further, dilatancy angle is one factor that influences the final result in PLAXIS 2D. An attempt was made to obtain the relationship between dilatancy angle and angle of internal friction for soils of different densities.