Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in the design of Internet of Things (IoT) for sensing the environment, collecting the data and to send them to the base station and the locations used for analysis. In WSNs for IoT, intelligent routing is an important phenomena that is necessary to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) in the network. Moreover, the energy required for communication in the IoT based sensor networks is an important challenge to avoid immense packet loss or packet drop, fast energy depletion and unfairness across the network leading to reduction in node performance and increase in delay with respect to packet delivery. Hence, there is an extreme need to check energy usage by the nodes in order to enhance the overall network performance through the application of intelligent machine learning techniques for making effective routing decisions. Many approaches are already available in the literature on energy efficient routing for WSNs. However, they must be enhanced to suite the WSN in IoT environment. Therefore, a new Neuro-Fuzzy Rule Based Cluster Formation and Routing Protocol for performing efficient routing in IoT based WSNs. From the experiments conducted in this research work using the proposed model, it is proved that the proposed routing algorithm provided better network performance in terms of the metrics namely energy utilization, packet delivery ratio, delay and network lifetime. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.