It is normally required that the anode materials should have high electrical conductivity and gas permeability to reduce the polarization loss of the cell. In this study, we made anode substrates of SOFC with two different methods, which resulted in different anode microstructures, especially different pore structures. We investigated the effect of microstructure of anode substrate on the unit cell performance in terms of its electrical conductivity, gas permeability and power-generating characteristics. According to the analysis, the anode substrate with higher inactive pore volume resulted in significantly reduced cell performance by decreasing the number of electrical conduction paths, the effective gas diffusion paths and the electrochemically active sites for the anodic reaction.