•Mixed convective of CNTs based flow of viscous material is addressed.•Both single and multi-walls carbon nanotubes is discussed.•Darcy’s law is used to characterize porous medium.•Viscous dissipation is used for heat transport in energy equation. In this article we focused on the mixed convection flow of SWCNT-Water and MWCNT-Water over a stretchable permeable sheet. The nanofluid occupied porous medium. Darcy’s law is used to characterize porous medium. The impact of viscous dissipation is considered. Transformation procedure is adopted to transform the governing PDE’s system into dimensionless form. In order to solve the dimensionless PDE’s system we used numerical method known as Finite difference method. Effects of flow variables i.e porosity parameter, suction parameter, Grashof number and Reynolds number on velocity, skin friction, temperature and Nusselt number are described graphically. The obtained results shows that velocity is dominant in SWCNT-Water over MWCNT-Water. Temperature is dominant in MWCNT-Water over SWCNT-Water.