Investigations on using artificial neural networks to predict the performance of single proton exchange membrane fuel cell has been carried out. Two sets of polarization data obtained at different temperatures and flow rates are used to create and simulate the network. Cell temperature, humidification temperatures, H2/air flow rates and current density have been used as inputs, and voltage is used as observed (output) value to train and simulate the network. This nonlinear data are batch trained, and artificial neural network has been constructed using feed forward backpropagation algorithm. Performance of the training has been improved by increasing the number of neurons to reduce the error. Simulation results are in agreement with experimental data, and the corresponding networks are used to predict the polarization behavior for unknown inputs. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.