Display omitted •Optimal catalyst formulation can differ from plasma and thermal processes.•CO and CO2 hydrogenation are both parallel reaction pathways in DBD plasma-catalysis.•In CeO2-Ni-Al2O3, a significant lower amount of CeO2 is required for reaching a high yield of methane in plasma-catalysis.•At a high CeO2 loadings, the rate determining step of methanation is similar in both plasma and non-plasma processes. The effect of Ce loading content on Ni-CeO2/Al2O3 catalysts for CO2 plasma methanation was evaluated. Catalysts were prepared by one-pot evaporation-induced self-assembly, Ni content was fixed at 15 wt. %, while CeO2 ranged 0–50 wt. %. The catalysts performances were tested under atmospheric pressure in two operation modes, thermal- and plasma-catalysis. As for conventional thermal catalysis, the catalyst was thermally activated between 200 and 400 °C; while in plasma-catalysis, the catalyst was activated by plasma generated by a dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) reactor. By the application of plasma in the catalyst bed, the reaction temperature was reduced from 350 °C to 150 °C to obtain the same level of conversion than thermal-catalysis. In addition, the incorporation of Ce in Ni-CeO2/Al2O3 led to an improvement of the catalytic performance in both thermal- and plasma-catalysis. Nevertheless, divergences on the optimum Ce content were found. On plasma experiments, the catalyst was more active at a lower amount of CeO2 (˜10 wt.%) with respect to thermal catalysis (˜40 wt.%), reducing the catalyst fabrication cost. Those differences highlights that the CO generated by plasma CO2 dissociation has a significant role for methane production, and thus the need to consider the by-products as reactant for the optimization of catalysts composition for DBD plasma-catalysis.