The present article presents the hydromagnetic nanofluid flow past a stretching cylinder embedded in non-Darcian Forchheimer porous media by using Buongiorno’s mathematical model (Buongiorno in J Heat Transf 128:240–250, 2006; Nadeem et al. in J Taiwan Inst Chem Eng 45:121, 2014, Nadeem et al. Appl Nanosci 4:625–631, 2014). Thermal radiation via Roseland’s approximation (Akbar et al. in Chin J Aeronaut 26:1389–1397, 2013; Nadeem and Haq in J Aerosp Eng 28:04014061, 2012), Brownian motion, thermophoresis and Joule heating effects are also considered. To explore thermal characteristics, prescribed heat flux and prescribed mass flux boundary conditions are deployed. Governing flow problem consists of PDEs in the cylindrical form, which are converted into system of nonlinear ODEs by applying applicable similarity transforms. ODEs are tackled by RK–Fehlberg fourth–fifth-order numerical integration scheme with shooting algorithm. Impact of numerous involving physical parameters on flow features like temperature distribution, velocity distribution, Sherwood number, local Nusselt number and skin friction coefficient is shown through graphs and tables.