Abstract Rational design on highly active and durable noble metal free electrocatalyst is extraordinarily important for the industrializations of rechargeable zinc air batteries (ZABs) and water splitting. Herein, we report a novel tri-functional electrocatalyst, N,P co-doped carbon nanotubes confined WN-Ni Mott-Schottky heterostructured nanoparticles (WN-Ni@N,P-CNT) via one-pot pyrolysis. Attributed to the WN-Ni Mott-Schottky heterostructure, water dissociation and charge transfer at atomic level are accelerated; thereby, WN-Ni@N,P-CNT performs a Pt-like hydrogen evolution (HER) catalytic activity at high current density. Moreover, a superior oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity is also achieved for WN-Ni@N,P-CNT demanding 268 mV overpotential to reach 10 mA cm−2, 52 mV lower than commercial IrO2; thus, merely 1.57 V is demanded to attain 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting in alkaline medium. Furthermore, half-wave potential for WN-Ni@N,P-CNT (0.84 V vs. RHE) is also similar to the benchmarked Pt/C. Owing to the superior ORR and OER activities, the power density of the assembled rechargeable ZAB outperforms Pt/C||IrO2 by a factor of 1.8 (126.2 mW cm−2 vs 71 mW cm−2). The exceptional battery performance is well-maintained after 330 h discharge-charge process due to the unique structure, in which Ni-WN hetero-nanoparticles are confined by N,P-CNT.