Abstract We have fabricated a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) with a pair of carbon-based electrodes using a transparent, conductive carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film modified with ultra-thin titanium-sub-oxide (TiO _x ) as the working electrode and a bilayer of conductive CNTs and carbon black as the counter electrode. Without TiO _x modification, the DSSC is almost nonfunctional whereas the power conversion efficiency (PCE) increases significantly when the working electrode is modified with TiO _x . The performance of the cell could be further improved when the carbon black film was added on the counter electrode. The improved efficiency can be attributed to the inhibition of the mass recombination at the working electrode/electrolyte interface by TiO _x and the acceleration of the electron transfer kinetics at the counter electrode by carbon black. The DSSC with a pair of carbon-based electrodes gives the PCE of 1.37%.