Recently, the replacement of expensive platinum-based catalytic materials with non precious metal materials to electrolyze water for hydrogen separation has attracted much attention. In this work, Ni0.85Se, MoS2 and their composite Ni0.85Se/MoS2 with different mole ratios are prepared successfully, as electrocatalysts to catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water splitting. The result shows that MoS2/Ni0.85Se with a molar ratio of Mo/Ni = 30 (denoted as M30) has the best catalytic performance towards HER, with the lowest overpotential of 118 mV at 10 mA cm(-2), smallest Tafel slope of 49 mV.dec(-1) among all the synthesized materials. Long-term electrochemical testing shows that M30 has good stability for HER over at least 30 h. These results maybe due to the large electrochemical active surface area and high conductivity. This work shows that transition metal selenides and sulfides can form effective electrocatalyst for HER. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.