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High throughput theoretical methods are increasingly used to identify promising photocatalytic materials for hydrogen generation from water as a clean source of energy. While most promising water splitting candidates require co-catalyst loading and electrical biasing, computational costs to predict them a priori become large. It is, therefore, important to identify bare, bias-free semiconductor photocatalysts with small initial hydrogen production rates, often in the range of tens of nanomoles per hour, as these can become highly efficient with further co-catalyst loading and biasing. Here, we report a sensitive hydrogen detection system suitable for screening new photocatalysts. The hydrogen evolution rate of the prototypical rutile TiO 2 loaded with 0.3 wt. % Pt is detected to be 78.0 ± 0.8  µmol/h/0.04 g, comparable with the rates reported in the literature. In contrast, sensitivity to an ultralow evolution rate of 11.4 ± 0.3 nmol/h/0.04 g is demonstrated for bare polycrystalline TiO 2 without electrical bias. Two candidate photocatalysts, ZnFe 2 O 4 (18.1 ± 0.2 nmol/h/0.04 g) and Ca 2 PbO 4 (35.6 ± 0.5 nmol/h/0.04 g) without electrical bias or co-catalyst loading, are demonstrated to be potentially superior to bare TiO 2 . This work expands the techniques available for sensitive detection of photocatalytic processes toward much faster screening of new candidate photocatalytic materials in their bare state.