PurposeThis paper aims to study numerically the flow, heat transfer, and entropy generation of aqueous copper oxide-silver hybrid nanofluid over a down-pointing rotating vertical cone, with linear surface temperature (LST) and linear surface heat flux (LSHF), in the presence of a cross-magnetic field. In industrial applications, such as oil and gas plants, food industries, steel factories and nuclear packages, the real bodies may contain nonorthogonal walls and variable cross-section three-dimensional forms which this issue can clarify the importance of selective geometry in the present research.Design/methodology/approachThe mass-based scheme is accomplished for the simulation, and the entropy generation and Bejan number will be analyzed in conjunction with the aforementioned model. It has been hypothesized that two types of boundary conditions (LST and LSHF) as well as five nanoparticle shapes (sphere, brick, cylinder, platelet and disk) present a collection of crucial results. The overseeing PDEs are changed over completely to the dimensionless ODEs, and these are solved by Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg approach combined with a shooting methodology for certain values of physical parameters.FindingsSubsequent to the fantastic compromise of the computational outcomes with past reports, the outcomes are introduced to conduct the investigation of the hydrodynamics/thermal boundary layers, the skin friction and the Nusselt number, as well as entropy generation and Bejan number. A state of hybrid nanofluid, which exhibits a remarkable increase in heat transfer in comparison to the states of mono-nanofluid and regular fluid, has been found to have the highest Nusselt number; however, the skin friction values should always be taken into account and managed. The entropy generation improves with the mass of the second nanoparticle (silver), while the opposite pattern is exhibited for the Bejan number. Furthermore, the lowest value of entropy generation number belongs to the cylindrical shape of nanoparticles in the LST case. In final, a significant accomplishment of the current study is the accurate output of the mass-based scheme for an entropy analysis problem.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, in this study, a new development of natural convective flow of a hybrid nanofluid about the warmed (LST and LSHF) and down-pointing rotating vertical cone by the mass-based algorithm has been presented. The applied methodology considers the masses of base fluid (water) and nanoparticles (Ag and CuO) as an alternative to the first and second nanoparticles volume fraction. Indeed, the combination use of the Tiwari–Das nanofluid model and the mass-based hybridity algorithm for the entropy generation analysis can be the main novelty of this work.