With the rise of development and utilization of marine resources, inclined pile foundation with good horizontal bearing capacity has been widely used as marine structures such as cross-sea bridge, offshore platform and high pile wharf. Under the action of strong nonlinear superposition of wave and current, severe local scour will occur around the inclined pile, which will reduce the safety of the structure and even lead to structural damage. In order to understand the influence of inclination angle on the scour characteristics of downstream inclined piles under different wave heights and flow velocities, and the difference from that of vertical piles, local scour tests under combined waves and current and pure current were carried out in the wave-current flume. By conducting tests on α=0°, 10°, 20° and 30° downstream inclined piles, the influence of inclination angle on scour duration, relative time scale and scour hole morphology was studied. The influence of dimensionless parameters Fr, KC and Ucw on maximum scour depth of downstream inclined pile was analyzed, and detailed comparison was made with previous vertical pile data. The results showed that when the pile was inclined to downstream, inclination angle had an important influence on the scouring characteristics of pile under combined waves and current. Compared with the vertical pile, with the increase of inclination angle, development rate of scour depth, scale and depth of scour hole gradually decreased, while ralative time scale increased gradually. For the 20° downstream inclined pile, when d50=0.403 mm，Uc=0.206 m/s，H=7 cm, the time for maximum scour depth point to be transferred from lateral front to front was about 60 min, which was much longer than that of a vertical pile. The dune of downstream inclined pile was distributed symmetrically along the central axis and had a bimodal structure, and the scour hole shape was obviously different from that of a vertical pile. Under the condition of moveable bed, regular sand waves were formed on the bed surface, the scour hole scale was further reduced, and the double peaks were more obvious. The relative scour depth of downstream inclined pile was the function of dimensionless parameters Fr, KC and Ucw, which was consistent with the trend for a vertical pile’s fitting curve.