Premixed safety gas is conventionally used to keep the anode of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) under reducing conditions during heat-up. This article presents the results of an experimental study to heat up a SOFC system and stack without the said premixed safety gases, i.e. by utilizing a natural gas pre-reformer and anode off-gas recycling (AOGR). Firstly, ex-situ experiments were conducted to investigate the operability of a pre-reformer during system heat-up. It was found that any oxygen fed to the reformer hinders the reforming reactions at low temperatures. Secondly, based on the ex-situ findings, series of heat-up cycles were conducted with a complete 10 kW system using AOGR and a planar SOFC stack. In these experiments it was found that the system heat-up is possible with fuel gas and steam only, without the need for premixed reducing safety gases. Use of the fuel gas instead of a premixed safety gas did not result in a significant performance loss in the SOFC stack. Therefore, such a heat-up strategy was developed for SOFC systems that reduces the need of premixed safety gas storage space and thus decreases the system cost. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.