A compact planar reformer for methanol reforming was designed and tested. The advantages of the reformer are that it is very compact, easy to be placed on board and scaled up. The reforming chamber two vaporization chambers, two combustion chambers and four heat exchange chambers are all integrated in one unit as the reformer. The effects of the ratios of O2/methanol and water/methanol on the performance of the reformer were investigated. In addition, the temperature distribution of different chambers in the reformer was studied. When the space velocity of methanol was 4 000 h-1, the gas output of the unit reached 3 m3/h~5 m3/h..