Multimedia streaming is one of the prominent applications in the field of wireless mobile ad hoc network (MANET). As the nodes are mobile and have limited battery power in MANET, the energy is considered as the most significant concern. Many of the existing energy-efficient approaches involve only the topology control, selfish node detection, and the energy-efficient path selection. In the proposed work, an energy-efficient MANET is developed based on a cost-aware and trust model. The cost-aware mechanism employs only when the multiple number of nodes is capable of transmitting and receiving the packets. The cost-aware model focuses on the power awareness for saving the power expenditure. The power can be saved by frequent switching of nodes to sleep mode using a Markov model. In order to prohibit the repetitive of data reception and to reduce the energy consumption, the trust model is utilized. The trust model protects the routing behavior in the network layer of MANET using Trusted Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (TAODV). This energy-efficient MANET is applied to optimize the multimedia streaming to validate its efficiency and performance. The experimental results exhibit better performance in terms of average delay, packet loss, packet delivery ratio, and the routing overhead when compared with the existing technique. © Research India Publications.