Considering the remarkable progress in photovoltaic performance, scholars have focused on perovskite solar cells (PSCs) over the recent 2 years. TiO2 thin film is a semiconductor with a wide band gap and usually used as an electron-selective layer (ESL) in PSCs. Although SnO2 exhibits higher conductivity than TiO2, its use as a compact ESL in PSCs has not been reported. In this study, nanocrystalline SnO2 thin film was prepared through sol-gel method and then characterized. The prepared SnO2 thin film was composed of small-sized tetragonal rutile nanocrystals. We applied the SnO2 compact ESL into PSCs and compared with that based on TiO2 thin layer. SnO2-ESL-based PSCs (S-PSCs) showed higher short-circuit current density and lower open-circuit voltage, fill factor, and conversion efficiency than the conventional TiO2-ESL-based PSCs (T-PSCs). Furthermore, the photovoltaic performance of S-PSCs was highly dependent on measurement means and this relationship was investigated and discussed in detail.