When studying new catalyst materials, supports or ionomers for fuel cells electrochemical ex situ methods are often used because they are fast, repeatable and require only small amounts of studied material. However, caution must be applied in order to obtain correlations with the fuel cell experiments. In this publication detailed procedures for electrochemical and direct alcohol fuel cell (DAFC) experiments are described. These electrochemical results on Pt and PtRu catalyst in acidic and alkaline electrolytes are compared with DAFC results performed at the first time in both acidic (Nafion) and alkaline (FAA-2) electrolytes. The results highlight the importance of careful selection of the experimental conditions and measuring procedures: for methanol oxidation cyclic voltammetry provided good response for fuel cell experiments, whereas better correlation for ethanol and isopropanol oxidation was obtained with chronoamperometry at multiple potentials. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.