An analysis of tubular solid oxide fuel cell fuelled with humidified hydrogen is presented in the paper. Numerical calculations have been performed by means of 0D and 1D levels of the electrical current density vector prediction together with 3D level of continuity, momentum, energy and species transport modeling. It has been shown that constant current density assumption throughout the fuel cell, as in 0D model, gives some overestimation of voltage, power and temperature in comparison with 1D model. However, obtained characteristics are similar for both cases. Additionally, an influence of discretization segments number on the model prediction has been analyzed. The local changes of current density along the fuel cell tube are also presented. It is shown that for increasing values of average current density throughout the cell, relevant local values of current density decrease linearly with tube length. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.