In this study, performance assessment of a direct formic acid fuel cell system is conducted, including evaluation of a broad set of operating parameters. The fuel cell system is modeled and simulated by using sub-routine developed by Matlab. The system components, such as compressor, humidifier and heat exchangers, are also taken into consideration. Effects of varying operating temperature, pressure, membrane thickness, current density, anode cathode stoichiometry and reference properties on the system are evaluated to predict the performance as close to real-cases as possible. It is found that increasing the temperature greatly favors the performance of the direct formic acid fuel cell system, low pressure and high reference environment temperature values have the same effect on the cell performance. The maximum exergetic efficiency by broad parametric investigation is estimated as 24%, where the power production is 10 kW. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.