Fabrication and performance study of dye-sensitized solar cells using different counter electrodes and photoanodes is reported. Spin coated, E-beam coated platinum, and graphene electrodes were used as counter electrodes. Different combinations of TiO2 nanoparticle and ZnO nanorods (NRs) with CdSe quantum dots were prepared and used as photoanodes. The photoanodes comprising of both ZnO NRs and TiO2 nanoparticles have shown improved performances in short-circuit current density and open-circuit voltage comparing the devices fabricated using only ZnO NR or TiO2 nanoparticles. The inclusion of CdSe quantum dots has been found to increase the performance of dye-sensitized solar cell for all the photoanodes. In case of counter electrodes, the cells fabricated with graphene showed improved performance. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.