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International audience; Structural defects are of significant importance in(electro)catalysis, as they provide sites of unusually high activity thatfind applications in many key electrochemical processes. However,tools to characterize surface defects remain scarce and complex,especially for nanocatalysts where classical methods such astransmission electron microscopy or X-ray scattering are limited intheir ability to probe the structure and distribution of the activesurface sites. Herein, we show that the ratio between the COadsstripping charge (QCO) and the charge required to desorb underpotentiallydeposited H atoms (QH) in structurally disordered Ptbasednanocatalysts scales almost linearly with the surface distortiondescriptor obtained via advanced physical methods. This trend isvalid in both rotating disk electrode configuration and in a real fuelcell device, thus providing the scientific community with a powerfuland versatile approach for semiquantitative estimation of the surface lattice distortion in Pt-based catalysts without theneed for exhaustive structural characterization.