Abstract Scalability is one of the important parameters for mobile communication networks of the present generation and further to the future 5G and beyond networks. When a user is in motion transferring from one cell site to another, then the handover procedure becomes important in the sense that it ensures that a user gets consistent connection without interruption. Nevertheless, the classic handover process in cellular networks has some sort of drawback like causing service interruptions, affecting packet transmission, and increased latency which is highly uncongenial to the evolving applications which have stringent requirement to latency. To overcome these challenges and improve the mobile handover in 5G and future mobile networks, this article puts forth a predictive handover mechanism using reinforcement learning algorithm. The RL algorithm outperforms the ML algorithm in several aspects. Compared to ML, RL has a higher handover success rate (∼95% vs. ∼90%), lower latency (∼30 ms vs. ∼40 ms), reduced failure rate (∼5% vs. ∼10%), and shorter disconnection time (∼50 ms vs. ∼70 ms). This demonstrates the RL algorithm's superior ability to adapt to dynamic network conditions.