In hydrogen fuel cells, the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) requires the catalysts used. Unfortunately, the precious platinum based catalysts still exhibit the best ORR activity in the commercial hydrogen fuel cells. Therefore, developing non-precious metal catalysts ORR become an important aspect for the utilization of hydrogen energy by using hydrogen fuel cells to develop non-precious catalysts and understand their active sites of ORR, herein the cobalt and nitrogen co-doped CNTs, nitrogen-doped CNTs and cobalt doped CNTs were prepared, respectively, and their catalytic properties toward ORR were tested and compared. The surface composition, microstructure and ORR performance of the samples were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), pore/specific surface analyzer and electrochemical methods. The results demonstrate that as the catalyst, the cobalt and nitrogen co-doped CNTs owns the highest ORR limiting current density, the most positive ORR onset potential and the largest transfer electron number close to four, and thus exhibits the better ORR catalytic performance compared to the other two samples of the nitrogen-doped CNTs and the cobalt doped CNTs. The good ORR performance of cobalt and nitrogen co-doped CNTs can be attributed to its active sites of nitrogen containing functional groups, cobalt or cobalt oxides, Co-N-x structure, and the synergistic effect of these sites on ORR. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.