Lubrication and cooling (LC) are critical for mechanical devices’ effective and dependable functioning, because they decrease friction and wear of moving components, ensuring superior efficiency. However, the cutting fluids in machining operations are a key cause of fear, due to their high cost, environmental impact, and health risks, particularly in computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools (MTs). During the industrial revolutions, MTs superseded manual labour and increased efficiency and output. Therefore, much research was conducted on lubrication and cooling in CNC machine tools (LC in CNC MTs). Therefore, it has become necessary to review and highlight research hotspots and gaps using specific means that can benefit budding researchers. The present review aims to identify research hotspots and gaps of LC in CNC MTs utilizing content and visualization analysis, employing VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software. The analysis comprises 136 documents retrieved by Scopus between 1988 and 2022. The analysis revealed a consistent growth in publications, primarily consisting of articles, with a minor proportion of review documents and conference papers. The keywords were categorized into seven clusters, with a notable prevalence of ‘surface roughness’ and ‘CNC machine tools’. A word cloud was generated to visualize the author’s frequently used keywords, where larger font sizes represented higher frequency. The treemaps demonstrated that ‘CNC’ appeared 34 times and contributed 8%, followed by ‘machine’, ‘tool’, ‘machining’, and ‘thermal’. In the abstract-terms tree plot, ‘machine’ appeared 235 times and contributed 7%, followed by ‘CNC’, ‘machining’, ‘tool’, and ‘cutting’. The content and visualization analysis identified six research hotspots: computer control systems, machine tools, computer numerical control, machining, numerical control systems, and surface roughness (Ra). The research gaps are temperature, cooling systems, cutting forces, energy utilization, tool life, nanoparticles, electric power utilization, and energy conservation. Based on hotspots and gaps, literature evaluations extensively addressed the strong roadmap of technical improvements and problems of LC in CNC MTs. A complete visualization and content analysis also produced a conceptual framework for best practices, and the study offers insight into the issues and prospects.