In this paper, two different speed controllers i.e., fuzzy online gain tuned anti wind up Proportional Integral and Derivative (PID) controller and fuzzy PID supervised online ANFIS controller for the speed control of brushless dc motor have been proposed. The control system parameters such as rise time, settling time, peak time, recovery time, peak overshoot and undershoot of speed response of the brushless dc motor with the proposed controllers have been compared with already published controllers such as anti wind up PID controller, fuzzy PID controller, offline ANFIS controller, PID supervised online ANFIS controller and On-line Recursive least square—error back propagation algorithm based ANFIS controller. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers, the brushless dc motor is operated under constant load condition, varying load conditions and varying set speed conditions. The simulation results under MATLAB environment have predicted better performance with fuzzy PID supervised online ANFIS controller under all operating conditions of the drive. •Fuzzy online gain tuned anti wind up PID and Fuzzy PID supervised online ANFIS based speed controllers are proposed for brushless dc motor.•Simulation has been performed and analyzed for varying speed and load conditions.•The proposed controller effectively eliminates the problem of wind up phenomenon and also improves the control system performance in all operating conditions of the brushless dc motor.