The light harvesting efficiency is counted as an important factor in the power conversion efficiency of DSSCs. There are two measures to improve this parameter, including enhancing the dye-loading capacity and increasing the light trapping in the photoanode structure. In this paper, these tasks are addressed by introducing a macro-porous silicon (PSi) substrate as photoanode. The effects of the novel photoanode structure on the DSSC performance have been investigated by using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, photocurrent-voltage, UV-visible spectroscopy, reflectance spectroscopy, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements. The results indicated that bigger porosity percentage of the PSi structure improved the both anti-reflective/light-trapping and dye-loading capacity properties. PSi based DSSCs own higher power conversion efficiency due to its remarkable higher photocurrent, open circuit voltage, and fill factor. Percent porosity of 64%, PSi (III), resulted in nearly 50 percent increment in power conversion efficiency compared with conventional DSSC. This paper showed that PSi can be a good candidate for the improvement of light harvesting efficiency in DSSCs. Furthermore, this study can be considered a valuable reference for more investigations in the design of multifunctional devices which will profit from integrated on-chip solar power.