Inorganic solids with enzyme-like activity are promising to overcome many restrictions of native enzymes in application. Especially attractive are nanoparticles with superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, due to their ability to reduce the damaging properties of reactive oxygen species within cells and organism. This review discusses the necessary requirements for nanoparticles to have SOD activity and reveals a close relationship between catalysis on prebiotic earth and the recent SOD mimics. This review also aims to highlight the progress in the development of SOD mimicking nanoparticles. We give a broad overview of nanoparticles with SOD activity, based on their material make-up, to underline their increasing diversity.