<p>Metallodendrimers provide a wide variety of applications in medicinal chemistry, catalysis, photovoltaics and for the elaboration of electronic devices. Metalated dendritic compounds are useful materials for energy transfer applications, due to their ability to combine many photoactive groups and metal centers, giving rise to energy transfer and light emission at different wavelengths. This phenomenon can be exploited for the design of sensors and molecular antennae. We developed various series of dendrimers and dendritic compounds bearing metalated porphyrins and bispyridinium metallic complexes as core, which were fully characterized. The optical and photophysical properties of these dendritic systems were studied by absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies. Herein, we performed a comparative study of these systems with supplementary data to evaluate how the nature of the metallic core, generation and number of donor–acceptor groups affect the energy transfer efficiency and other photophysical properties.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>