Abstract This paper studied the propagating characteristics of (2+1) dimensional nonlinear ion acoustic waves in a multicomponent plasma with nonthermal electrons, positrons and bipolar ions. The dispersion relations are initially explored by using the small amplitude wave's dispersion relation. Then, the Sagdeev potential method is employed to study large amplitude ion acoustic waves. The analysis involves examining the system's phase diagram, Sagdeev potential function, and solitary wave solutions through numerical solution of an analytical process in order to investigate the propagation properties of nonlinear ion acoustic waves under various parameters. It is found that the propagation of nonlinear ion acoustic waves is subject to the influence of various physical parameters, including the ratio of number densities between the unperturbed positrons, electrons to positive ions, nonthermal parameters, the masses ratio of positive ions to negative ions, and the charge numbers ratio of negative ions to positive ions, the ratio of the electrons’ temperature to positrons’ temperature. In addition, the multicomponent plasma system has a compressive solitary waves with amplitude greater than zero or a rarefactive solitary waves with amplitude less than zero, in the meantime, compressive and rarefactive ion acoustic wave characteristics depend on the charge numbers ratio of negative ions to positive ions.