Development of cost-effective and robust counter electrodes (CEs) is a persistent objective for high- efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). To achieve this goal, we present here the hydrothermal syn- thesis of well-aligned NiPt alloy CEs, which is templated by ZnO nanowires and nanosheets. The prelim- inary results demonstrate that NiPt alloy electrodes are featured by increased charge-transfer processes and electrocatalytic activity in comparison with expensive Pt CE, yielding power conversion efficiencies of 8.29％ and 7.41％ in corresponding DSSCs with NiPt nanowire and nanosheet alloy CEs, respectively. Ad- ditionally, the NiPt alloy CEs also display extraordinary dissolution-resistant ability when suffering long- term utilization in liquid-junction DSSCs.