This paper demonstrates the comparative study on structural, optical and humidity sensing characteristics of ZnO, SnO2 nanopowders and its equimolar composite. The nanopowders and its composite were synthesized by co-precipitation method. The synthesized nanopowders were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy in diffuse reflectance mode and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The humidity sensing characteristics of ZnO, SnO2 and ZnO-SnO2 nanocomposite were examined to the wide humidity range of 7%-92% at room temperature. Compared with pure ZnO and SnO2 humidity sensor, ZnO-SnO2 composite nanopowders based sensor showed high sensitivity (∼425.8). Further, the composite based humidity sensor shows lower response and recovery time than ZnO and SnO2 based sensor. Copyright © 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.