Development of highly efficient cocatalyst is important towards photocatalytic H-2 production. Herein, a series of transition metal sulfides XS (X = Mo, Cu, Pd) as cocatalysts have been successfully grown on Mn0.5Cd0.5S photocatalyst through photo-reduction or in-situ deposition method, respectively. Among them, the maximum production of H-2 obtained from MoS2/Mn0.5Cd0.5S, CuxS/Mn0.5Cd0.5S (1 <= x <= 2) and PdS/Mn0.5Cd0.5S samples were 197, 347 and 614 mu mol/h, which were around 6.5, 11.5 and 20.3 times than pristine Mn0.5Cd0.5S. MoS2/Mn0.5Cd0.5S heterostructure can facilitate electron transfer from Mn0.5Cd0.5S to MoS2 and MoS2 as active site for H-2 production, p-n junction constructed between Mn0.5Cd0.5S and CuxS can efficiently separate the photo-generated carriers and PdS as a hole acceptor can accelerate the consume of photo-generated holes to enhance the photocatalytic H-2 production. The effective charge transfer was further proved by the weaker PL intensity and stronger photocurrent density relative to that of Mn0.5Cd0.5S alone. This work demonstrated that transition metal sulfides XS (X = Mo, Cu, Pd) are efficient cocatalysts to improve the H-2 production performance of Mn0.5Cd0.5S photocatalyst. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.