The development of high-performance lead-free piezoceramics for replacing Pb-based perovskites has attracted lots of attention, and comparable room-temperature piezoresponse has been realized in (Na,K)NbO 3 and BaTiO 3 -based ceramics with local structure heterogeneity via adjusting polymorphic phase boundary. In this work, a new method of oxygen octahedron tilt design is used in NaNbO 3 -based lead-free ceramics, which usually shows complex oxygen octahedron tilt information inherited from NaNbO 3 . The substitution of Ba(Fe 0.5 Nb 0.5 )O 3 and BaTiO 3 with high tolerance factor into NaNbO 3 leads to a gradual elimination of anti-parallel cation displacement and anti-phase tilt along the three axes; as a result, a single tetragonal phase with P 4 bm space group and only in-phase tilt along c axis is achieved in 0.88NaNbO 3 -0.04Ba(Fe 0.5 Nb 0.5 )O 3 -0.08BaTiO 3 ceramic. Accompanying the decreased oxygen octahedral tilt degree, a drastically improved d 33 up to 367 pC N -1 (over ten times that of NaNbO 3 ceramic) is obtained, reaching a record high in NaNbO 3 -based lead-free ceramics. Together with temperature insensitive piezoresponse originating from thermally stable oxygen octahedral tilt structure, the studied NaNbO 3 -based materials show large potential for replacing Pb-based ceramics in some electronic devices. The oxygen octahedron tilt engineering would be used for designing more high-performance lead-free ceramics with high piezoresponse and excellent thermal stability simultaneously.