Vibrational excited hydrogen molecules play an important role in a negative ion source or in divertor plasmas. Based on the quasi-steady state and quasi-stationary model for the vibrational populations and the most recent published cross section data, we evaluated the vibrational distribution of H2 and D2 in the case of electron temperature less than 10 eV. For the reactions which are unavailable from the literature, we use the Gryzinski’s formula for the vibrational resolved cross section data while the needed Franck-Condon factors were obtained by numerically solving the radial-Schrödinger equation. The calculation shows that in the low electron temperatures, the ratio of N(v=1)/N(v=0) is a deceasing function of the electron temperature both for the H2 and D2. However, the experiment by Fulcher-a spectroscopy indicates that the opposite dependency. The mechanisms behind are explored and discussed.