High performance bifunctional catalysts for water splitting are very promising. Transition metal phosphides as catalysts for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) have attracted considerable attention due to their high performance. However, the catalyst with excellent properties still remains a significant challenge. Herein, the nanoporous NiFeMoP(np-NiFeMoP) ribbon was prepared by quenching and dealloying method. It was found that np-NiFeMoP showed excellent HER and OER performance in 1 M KOH. The overpotential of OER is as low as 197 mV at a current density of 20 mA·cm−2. When the current density is 10 mA·cm−2, the overpotential of HER is 223 mV. Moreover, np-NiFeMoP only needs a cell voltage of 1.41 V when current density is 10 mA·cm−2 for water splitting. Our current work may provide some new insights on rationally constructing nanoporous structure with rich active sites to boost the catalytic performances for overall water splitting. •Nanoporous NiFeMoP ribbons with rich active sites were synthesized by dealloying.•Nanoporous ribbons can be directly used as bifunctional electrodes.•Nanoporous ribbons exhibited superior electrocatalytic performance and stability.