The present work mainly deals with the development of nitrogen doped diamond like carbon (n-type DLC) thin films as counter electrode (CE) in place of platinum that is commonly used as a counter electrode and catalyst in the dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) design. The DLC films were grown on indium-tin-oxide coated glass substrates using cathodic arc physical vapor deposition (PVD). Four different CEs namely, ITO/Pt/DLC (n-type), ITO/Cr/DLC (n-type), ITO/Cr/DLC (n-type)/Pt, and Glass/Cr/DLC (n-type)/Pt apart from standard ITO/Pt are prepared. The surface morphology, sheet resistance and redox catalytic activity for I−/I3− of the above CEs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), four point probe resistivity and cyclic voltammetry (CV), respectively. The performance of DSSCs with these DLC based CEs was evaluated by photo electrochemical response, in this study. The CE with a structure of ITO/Cr/DLC (n-type)/Pt (deposition time 10 s), exhibited an efficiency of 3.3%. After replacing ITO glass substrate with simple glass substrate, i.e. for Glass/Cr/DLC (n-type)/Pt structure, the photoelectric efficiency could reach to 3.2%, indicating that we can successfully replace ITO glass substrate with simple glass plate in the present design and retain the conversion efficiency as well.Research highlights▶ Nitrogen doped DLC could compensate the Pt layer to some extent in normal counter electrodes of DSSC. ▶ When a layer of Pt (12.5 nm thick) is coated on ITO/Cr/DLC (n-type) counter electrode, the conversion efficiency reached 3.35%. ▶ 10 sccm of N2 concentration gave optimal doping and best conductivity for the DLC based counter electrode. ▶ A glass plate can be used as substrate instead of ITO coated glass substrate and almost retained the conversion efficiency.