The low-temperature fabrication of a counter electrode (CE) with low cost and high catalytic activity is one of the key steps for the practical realization of flexible dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) Electrophoretic deposition is found to be an efficient method for room-temperature deposition of platinum nanoparticles on plastic substrates with low cost The plastic CEs show increased catalytic activity and reduced transmittance when the deposited time is increased from 0 to 8 min Under optimized conditions flexible DSSCs based on electrophoretic deposition plastic Pt CEs and nanocrystalline TiO2 photoanodes on Ti foil reach an energy-conversion efficiency (eta) of 5 8% (under a rear-side illumination of AM 1 5 100 mW cm(-2)) which is better than that for a device (eta = 5 3%) fabricated under the same conditions with a sputtered Pt CE (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved