This paper presents a new design for high temperature fuel cell and bottoming thermal engine hybrid systems. Now, instead of the commonly used gas turbine engine, an externally fired - Stirling - piston engine is used, showing outstanding performance when compared to previous designs. Firstly, a comparison between three thermal cycles potentially usable for recovering waste heat from the cell is presented, concluding the interest of the Stirling engine against other solutions used in the past. Secondly, the interest shown in the previous section is confirmed when the complete hybrid system is analyzed. Advantages are not only related to pure thermal and electrochemical parameters like specific power or overall efficiency. Additionally, further benefits can be obtained from the atmospheric operation of the fuel cell and the possibility to disconnect the bottoming engine from the cell to operate the latter on stand alone mode. This analysis includes on design and off design operation. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.