Mesoporous NiO nanosheets were directly grown on three-dimensional (3D) carbon cloth substrate, which can be used as binder-free anode for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). These mesoporous nanosheets were interconnected with each other and forming a network with interval voids, which give rise to large surface area and efficient buffering of the volume change. The integrated hierarchical electrode maintains all the advantageous features of directly building two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures on 3D conductive substrate, such as short diffusion length, strain relaxation and fast electron transport. As the LIB anode, it presents a high reversible capacity of 892.6 mAh g(-1) after 120 cycles at a current density of 100 mA g(-1) and 758.1 mAh g(-1) at a high charging rate of 700 mA g(-1) after 150 cycles. As demonstrated in this work, the hierarchical NiO nanosheets/carbon cloth also shows high flexibility, which can be directly used as the anode to build flexible LIBs. The introduced facile and low-cost method to prepare NiO nanosheets on flexible and conductive carbon cloth substrate is promising for the fabrication of high performance energy storage devices, especially for next-generation wearable electronic devices.