Rutin has a broad range of physiological activities and often used clinically as therapeutic medicine on humans, and it is important to develop sensitive analytical methods for rutin determination. The nanocomposites, consisting of Cu2O, Au nanoparticles and nitrogen-doped graphene (denoted as Cu2O-Au/NG), were successfully fabricated by a facile and green method and used for highly sensitive detection of rutin. The electrochemical methods, such as cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) have been used to investigate the electrochemical properties of the fabricated sensors for rutin detection. The results showed that under optimal conditions, Cu2O-Au/NG/GCE exhibited highest sensitivity of 114.94 mu A.mM(-1) than the Other modified electrodes, and a low detection limit of 30 nM could be achieved with a linear concentration response range from 0.06 to 512.90 mu M. The enhanced electrochemical performances could be attributed to the synergistic effect between Cu2O-Au and NG and the outstanding catalytic effect of the Cu2O-Au nanoparticles. Finally, the sensor was successfully used to analyze rutin tablets, showing high potential for practical applications. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.