The recent work provides the numerical investigation of an unsteady viscous nanofluid flow between two porous plates under the effect of variable magnetic field and suction/injection. Navier Stokes equations are modeled to study the hydrothermal properties of four different nanoparticles copper [Formula: see text], silver [Formula: see text], aluminum oxide [Formula: see text], and titanium oxide [Formula: see text]. The resultant nonlinear partial differential equations, governing the viscous fluid flow, are solved numerically using Crank–Nicolson scheme. The effect of important physical parameters such as volume fraction, magnetic strength, and porosity parameter are shown both graphically and in tabular form. It is found that due to the greatest thermal diffusivity for nanofluid [Formula: see text], comparatively the velocity increases more rapidly with the increasing value of volume fraction. Due to this effect, it is preferred to use nanofluid [Formula: see text] for transportation purposes.