The current article aims to reveal the thermal characteristics of dissipative magnetized chemically reactive unsteady couple stress convection along a cylinder with radiation, heat source/sink, and Soret influences. Governing partial differential equations (PDEs) are produced based on considered physical situation and geometry. Resultant Navier–Stokes equations (NS-E) are highly non-linear, coupled in nature. Analytical techniques fail to find the solutions of these resultant NS-equations. The discretized algebraic NS equations are solved by applying Crank–Nicolson numerical scheme through pentadiagonal and tridiagonal algorithms. Also, the flow of couple stress fluid with physical effects gives a 4th order PDE which needs pentadiagonal algorithm to solve it. Implementing this algorithm numerically is challenging and it is worthy to investigate to analyze the flow behavior. Hence, the simulated couple stress fluid velocity, energy, and mass diffusion profiles including engineering quantities of interest in the boundary layer region are discussed for different parametric values. Contemporary exploration illustrates that magnifying the buoyancy ratio parameter enhances the velocity field. Thermal field elevated for higher values of energy source/sink number. Also, contour plots of velocity, temperature, and mass diffusion profiles have been drawn in the vicinity of a cylinder. In addition, the range of control parameters performed in this study are = 0.00.6, = 0.2 0.8, = 0.00.3, = 0.10.4, and = 1.04.0. Finally, investigated dimensionless outcomes are verified with available solutions and got good agreement.