Abstract The present study is devoted to the flow and heat transfer analysis of the hyperbolic tangent fluid through a stretching sheet by considering the effect of thermal radiation in addition to an applied transverse magnetic field, as well as thermal and velocity slip conditions. The Lie group analysis technique has been utilized for establishing similarity transformations, which effectively transform the governing equations to a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs). These ODEs are numerically solved by utilizing the shooting method. The heat transfer properties and flow features under the influence of various physical parameters are also studied. We noted that by increasing the thermal radiation parameter, the temperature profile increases and also the thermal boundary layer thickens. Furthermore, it is deduced that rising the thermal radiation parameter reduces the local Nusselt number. Moreover, the numerical results obtained are in agreement with the existing results in the literature.