Motivated by a recent report by Biwas and Bose (Phys Rev D 99:104002, 2019) that the observations of GW170817 to constrain the extent of pressure anisotropy in neutron stars within Bower–Liang anisotropic model, we systematically study the effects of anisotropic pressure on properties of the neutron stars with hyperons. The equation of state is calculated using the relativistic mean-field model with a BSP parameter set to determine nucleonic coupling constants and by using SU(6) and hyperon potential depths to determine hyperonic coupling constants. We investigate three models of anisotropic pressure known in literature namely Bowers and Liang (Astrophys J 88:657, 1974), Horvat et al. (Class Quant Grav 28:025009, 2011), and Cosenza et al. (J Math Phys (NY) 22:118, 1981). The reliability of the equation of state used is checked by comparing the parameters of the corresponding EOS to recent experimental data. The mass–radius, moment of inertia, and tidal deformability results of Bowers–Liang, Horvat et al., and Cosenza et al. anisotropic models are compared to the corresponding recent results extracted from the analysis of some NS observation data. We have found that the radii predicted by anisotropic NS are sensitive to the anisotropic model used and the results obtained by using the model proposed by Horvat et al. with anisotropic free parameter $$\varUpsilon ~\approx -$$Υ≈- 1.15 are relative compatible with all taken constraints.