In this study we analyzed the flow, heat and mass transfer behavior of Jeffrey, Maxwell and Oldroyd-B nanofluids over a permeable stretching sheet in the presence of transverse magneticfield, thermophoresis, Brownian motion and suction/injection. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using self similarity transformation and solved numerically by using Runge-Kutta based shooting technique. The effects of non-dimensional governing parameters on the flow, heat and mass transfer are discussed with the help of graphs. Also the skin the friction coefficient, local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are presented through graphs. We found that the results in this study prove to be highly satisfactory with the existing results. We observed that the heat and mass transfer rate in Oldroyd-B nanofluid is significantly high compared with the Jeffery and Maxwell nanofluids. It is also observed that the friction factor of Maxwell nanofluid is less compared with the Oldroyd-B and Jeffrey nanofluid. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.