The conceptual design of a novel compliant microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based gripper equipped with elecrothermal actuating as well as electrothermal force sensing is introduced in this paper. By this design combination, the device possesses some unique characteristics including a small and compact footprint size, and a large and steady force from the thermal actuator. Simulation results show that the thermal actuator produces the gripping force to execute the gripping operation with a range of approximately 85 μm under a low source voltage of 2 V. At the same time, owning to a compliant rotation bearing, a large displacement of gripping range is obtained. The established theoretical models have a coincident matching with the FEA simulation results, which verifies the feasible design of the gripper in this work.