Abstract <p>The Control of the crystal growth of perovskite plays a crucial role in the performance improvement of perovskite solar cells. In this work, we prepared perovskite with lead acetate as a lead source and investigated its effect on the performance of hole transport materials-free perovskite solar cells with carbon electrode. We found that the molar ratio of lead acetate and methyl-ammonium iodide affects the morphology and crystallinity of the prepared perovskite. With the increase of lead acetate content, the performance of the prepared devices improved and the highest efficiency of device was 14.92% at a molar ratio of 1.050 : 3. We used cheap lead acetate to fabricate perovskite solar cells. This study can be attributed to lower fabrication costs of perovskite solar cells and commercialization by combining perovskite with carbon electrode-based perovskite solar cells, which are fabricated using low-cost lead acetate.</p>