Abstract The current study addresses the influences of Brownian motion and thermophoretic force on non-Newtonian fluid flow. Eyring–Powell fluid serves as the base fluid for heat and mass transfer through a porous channel. Buongiorno model for nanofluid is incorporated into the convection–diffusion equation to investigate the random motion of tiny spherical particles. Additional contributions of viscous dissipation and thermal radiation have also been applied by formulating two different types of flows. A system of nonlinear coupled differential equations is solved with the help of the “regular perturbation method”. For the limiting case, a numerical solution is obtained to validate the computational results with existing literature and it is found to be in complete agreement. Eventually, it is inferred that the heat transfer rate dominates in nanofluid flow due to the moving plate, while the mass transfer is more prominent in generalized Couette nanoflow of Eyring–Powell fluid.