The electrocatalytic oxidation of small organic compounds such as methanol or formic acid has been the subject of numerous investigations in the last decades. The motivation for these studies is often their use as fuel in so-called direct methanol or direct formic acid fuel cells, promising alternatives to hydrogen-fueled proton exchange membrane fuel cells. The fundamental research spans from screening studies to identify the best performing catalyst materials to detailed mechanistic investigations of the reaction pathway. These investigations are commonly performed at conditions quite different to fuel cell devices, where no liquid electrolyte will be present. We previously developed a gas diffusion electrode setup to mimic “real-life” reaction conditions and study electrocatalysts for oxygen gas reduction or water splitting. It is here demonstrated that the setup is also suitable to investigate the properties of catalysts for the electro-oxidation of small organic molecules simulating conditions of low temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells. •GDE measurements for oxidation of small organic molecules mimicking PEM conditions.•Comparison of RDE and GDE results.•Applying realistic catalyst films without ECSA loss.•Benchmark study for GDE measurements.