Performance of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) with carbon supported nickel phthalocyanine (NiPc)-MnOx composite (MFC-1) and nickel phthalocyanine (MFC-2) incorporated cathode was compared with a control MFC with non-catalysed carbon felt as cathode (MFC-3) and MFC-4 having Pt on cathode (as benchmark reference control). MFC-1 exhibited power density of 8.02 Wm(-3), which was four folds higher than control MFC-3 (2.08 Wm(-3)) and 1.14 times higher than MFC-2 (6.97 Wm(-3)). Coulombic efficiency of 30.3% obtained in MFC-1 was almost double of that obtained for control MFC-3 and it was 5.4% lesser as compared to MFC-4 (35.7%). Linear sweep voltammetry study of cathodes revealed that NiPc-MnOx could enhance the electrocatalytic activity of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in comparison to control cathode. However, the power recovery from MFC-1 was noted little lower than what obtained from MFC-4 (10.58 Wm(-3)), however the cost normalized power was two times higher than Pt catalyst on cathode. Thus, NiPc-MnOx based catalyst developed in this study has potential to enhance ORR in cathodes of MFCs in order to harvest more power. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.