The production of hydrogen by solar-driven water splitting has attracted a lot attention as an ideal solution for global energy and environment issues. Platinum has been widely used as the cocatalyst for facilitating hydrogen evolution reaction, but the high cost and low abundance may limit the large-scale commercial application of solar-to-fuels technique. Here we report an active and cheap photocatalyst, using copper oxide as cocatalyst immobilized on anatase titanium dioxide. The hydrogen evolution efficiency from the copper oxide cocatalyst can be comparable to those of systems containing the well-known platinum cocatalysts. Therefore, this copper-based cocatalyst provides an inexpensive means of harnessing solar energy to achieve efficient hydrogen evolution from water splitting. The findings in this work may open the door for developing other noble-metal-free catalysts for photocatalysis and photoelectrochemistry. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.