This paper has reported the fabrication and characterization of pristine, and silver (Ag)-doped nanostructured ZnO/CuO composite thin films that have not been previously reported. The thin films were synthesized by the successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) technique. The morphological, crystalline structure, optical and electrical characterizations of the films have been achieved utilizing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, Fourier transform ınfrared spectrum (FTIR) analysis, ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectrophotometry and the four-point probe measurements. Particle sizes of pristine and Ag-doped ZnO/CuO thin films were found to vary from 32 to 58 nm. Crystallite size was changed from 16.40 to 18.90 nm with changing Ag dopant in the ZnO/CuO composite film. FTIR spectra that have the absorption peaks at ~ 725 and ~ 510 cm−1 referred to the stretching vibration of Zn–O and Cu–O bonds during the synthesis of ZnO/CuO nanofilms. The bandgap values of ZnO/CuO composite films increased from 2.05 to 2.36 eV as Ag content increased from 0 to 2 M%. The activation energies of the samples were obtained from the Arrhenius plots of σ versus 1/T. The multiple activation process was observed. It was noteworthy that Ag-doping results in a significant difference in conductivity at all temperature values.