Transitional metal carbides have great potential to overcome the shortcomings of high cost and rare sources of precious metal based catalysts. In this paper, we report the catalytic performances of commercial vanadium carbide (VC) and the influences of nitrogen doping on its catalytic performance towards oxygen reduction reactions. Results showed that nitrogen has been doped into the crystal lattice of commercial VC with a slight increase of crystalline size. The half-wave potential of oxygen reduction of the commercial VC and nitrogen doped VC was only 0.06 V and 0.04 V lower than that of Pt/C catalyst, respectively. The stability of VC for catalyzing oxygen reduction could be improved by nitrogen doping. Copyright (C) 2016, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.