Material selection plays an important role for cost-effective manufacturing of products leading to quality production and better utilisation of resources. Improper material selection may cause premature product failure. From a wide range of materials available in market, selection of the best material for a particular application is not an easy task. While selecting material, the designers need to take into account a large number of material selection criteria. Because of these reasons, material selection has got considerable attention by the academicians and researchers. This paper attempts to solve the material selection problems using complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) and complex proportional assessment with grey number (COPRAS-G) methods while considering different material selection criteria and their relative importance. The rankings obtained using these two methods almost corroborate with those derived by the past researchers. Two real time examples are illustrated to demonstrate the potenti...