Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have attracted tremendous attention because of their sustai-nability, high energy density, long cycle life and environmental benignity. Apart from these, LIBs have great potential applications in electric vehicles, potable electronics, solar and wind-based electricity generation systems and renewable energy storage. LIBs became prominent power sources as the non-renewable fossil-fuels result in massive air pollution and depleting very fast. Considering the scarcity, environmental benignity and cost, it is important to develop low cost, high abundance and eco-friendly electrode materials for LIBs which can deliver high energy and power densities with long cycle lives. Manganese ferrite, MnFe₂O₄ is one of the binary metal oxides and belongs to iron spinel which has been studied widely for its application in drug delivery supercapacitors and in magnetic devices. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been only a few studies on the application of MnFe₂O₄ as anode materials for LIBs although it possesses a high theoretical capacity of 930 mA g^-1, which is much higher than that of commercial graphite anode. But MnFe₂O₄ suffers from poor cycling stability because of the large volume changes during lithiation/delithiation. Here, mesoporous microspheres of MnFe₂O₄ have been successfully synthesized by a facile method followed by a post heat treatment. The mesoporous MnFe₂O₄ electrodes exhibit high reversible capacity of 733 mA h g^-1 after 50 cycles at the current density of 100 mA g^-1 indicating the excellent cycling stability. The cell delivered discharge capacities of 1371, 1008, 876, 625, 523, 380 mA h g⁻¹ at current densities of 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000, 1500 mA g⁻¹, respectively. Even at a high current density of 1000 mA g⁻¹, the electrode could deliver a discharge capacity of 523 mA h g⁻¹, which is much higher than the theoretical capacity of graphite. Interestingly, even after stepwise increment in the current densities while measuring the rate capability, the electrode retains a capacity of 812 mA h g⁻¹ when the current rate reverts back to 100 mA g⁻¹.  We believe that such good performance results from the mesoporous nature of MnFe₂O₄ microspheres, which can substantially absorb large volume changes due during Li+ insertion/extraction.