To harness solar energy to generate fuels powerful anodes for the water oxidation reaction need to be developed. During the last decade, an extensive number of molecular water oxidation catalysts based on transition metals have been reported, and in some cases, these molecular catalysts have been anchored on conductive surfaces generating molecular anodes. In this review, we analyze the factors that influence the performance of these molecular anodes, which are largely related to their mechanism of O–O bond formation and the nature of the anchoring functionality.