•CFD and experimental analysis of a compact solar dehumidification system.•Analyzing the effect of integrating baffles on drying performance.•Exergy efficiency of the drying chamber was achieved between 44.91 and 55.28%.•Maximum deviation between numerical and experimental findings obtained as 6.5%. Drying foods and medicinal plants is a process with high energy consumption because high amount of energy is needed for evaporating the water from the surface of the fresh materials. Therefore, developing cost-effective and simple-structured drying systems with low energy demand is a crucial matter. In the present study, compact type solar dryers have been designed, manufactured and tested experimentally. Within this context, thermal and flow behavior of compact dryers with and without baffles have been analyzed using CFD method. Then, fabricated compact dryers have been experimented at different conditions to determine their performance. Experimental and numerical findings of this study illustrated the effective design of the developed compact solar dryers. However, compact solar dryer with baffles exhibited better performance than the solar dryer without baffles. According to the experimental results, mean specific moisture extraction rate in compact dryers with and without baffles obtained between the ranges of 0.55–0.69 and 0.47–0.62 kg/kWh, respectively. In addition, average exergy efficiency of drying chambers was attained over the range of 44.91–55.28%. Overall findings of this study indicated successfulness of a compact solar dryer which developed using simple and lightweight materials.