The scarce supply of Ir used to catalyze the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction in acidic water electrolysis calls for unconventional approaches to design more active catalysts with minimal resource usage for their commercial scaling. Industrial-ready production methods and laboratory scale tests that can reflect the catalyst behaviour realistically need to be included in this process. In this work, we benchmarked three series of self-supported Ir–Co catalysts with low Ir loading produced by physical vapour deposition under relevant current densities in a gas diffusion electrode setup. It was seen that after selective acid leaching of the Co, a nanoporous structure with a high electrochemically active surface area and a mixed oxide and metallic character was formed. Depending on the initial Co:Ir deposition ratio over ten times higher oxygen evolution mass activities could be reached as compared to a commercial, unsupported IrOx nanoparticle catalyst used as a benchmark in the same setup configuration. The presented integrative catalyst design and testing strategy will help to facilitate bridging the gap between research and application for the early introduction of next-generation catalysts for water splitting.