The active sites of powder and monolith V 2 O 5 -WO 3 /TiO 2 catalysts prepared on commercial titania supports were studied for the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of nitrogen oxides (NO x ) by ammonia (NH 3 ) while varying vanadium oxide (V 2 O 5 ) coverage. Four different types of commercial titania (DT-51, DT-56, G-5, and S-10) were used in this study. It was observed that the SCR activity of powder V 2 O 5 -WO 3 /TiO 2 is highly dependent on the vanadium coverage. The catalytic activity increased with increasing V 2 O 5 coverage and reached a maximum between one-half and one monolayer of vanadia. However, NO x conversion decreased at high V 2 O 5 coverage. The catalysts were characterized by temperature-programmed desorption of NH 3 (NH 3 TPD), temperature-programmed reduction by hydrogen (H 2 TPR), oxygen chemisorption, and N 2 adsorption to evaluate the active sites responsible for high SCR activity. The spectroscopic studies revealed that the rapid decrease in SCR activity at higher vanadia coverage is due to the decrease in the reducibility and dispersion of vanadium species. This synthetic learning was extended to investigate the active sites in extruded monolith V 2 O 5 -WO 3 /TiO 2 catalysts. A good correlation between redox sites and activity for powder and monolith V 2 O 5 -WO 3 /TiO 2 catalysts was found. Graphical Abstract 0.57 1.14