In this paper, we have investigated necking formability of anisotropic and tension-compression asymmetric metallic sheets subjected to in-plane loading paths ranging from plane strain tension to near equibiaxial tension. For that purpose, we have used three different approaches: a linear stability analysis, a nonlinear two-zone model and unit-cell finite element calculations. We have considered three materials –AZ31-Mg alloy, high purity α-titanium and OFHC copper– whose mechanical behavior is described with an elastic-plastic constitutive model with yielding defined by the CPB06 criterion (15) which includes specific features to account for the evolution of plastic orthotropy and strength differential effect with accumulated plastic deformation (48). From a methodological standpoint, the main novelty of this paper with respect to the recent work of N’souglo et al. (42) –which investigated materials with yielding described by the orthotropic criterion of Hill (24)– is the extension of both stability analysis and nonlinear two-zone model to consider anisotropic and tension-compression asymmetric materials with distortional hardening. The results obtained with the stability analysis and the nonlinear two-zone model show reasonable qualitative and quantitative agreement with forming limit diagrams calculated with the finite element simulations, for the three materials considered, and for a wide range of loading rates varying from quasi-static loading up to 40000 s^− 1, which makes apparent the capacity of the theoretical models to capture the mechanisms which control necking formability of metallic materials with complex plastic behavior. Special mention deserves the nonlinear two-zone model, as it does not need prior calibration –unlike the stability analysis– and it yields accurate predictions that rarely deviate more than 10% from the results obtained with the unit-cell calculations.