In the last years, significant attentions have been paid in the state of the literature to have precise current/voltage (I/V) polarization curves of polymer exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). This article presents a novel application of a very recent heuristic-based on technique, namely Salp Swarm Optimizer (SSO) to define the best values of unknown parameters of PEMFC model. The total of square deviations (TSD) between the actual and calculated results represents the objective function. The TSD is minimized by the proposed SSO-based methodology to insignificant values to ensure the concurrence and consistency between measured and estimated voltage points and subjects to set of constraints. Two test case studies of typical commercial stacked PEMFCs, namely NedStack PS6 and BCS 500-W PEM generator are performed to demonstrate the potential of the proposed procedure under various operating scenarios. Moreover, necessary comparisons to other optimizers under same data and conditions are in order. In addition to this, performance measures are made to evaluate the performance of the SSO. The simulations along with comparisons indicate that the proposed SSO-based on method is successfully used to characterize the PEMFC model precisely. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.