Synthesis of hydrazine hydrate assisted manganese doped zinc selenides by hydrothermal technique led to the formation of good quality nanospheres which are controlled by Ostwald ripening process. Structural studies using XRD showed the incorporation of manganese in zinc selenide matrix with their crystallite sizes ranging between 10 and 15 nm, which corroborate with the TEM measurements. Dominant emission (517 nm) corresponds to the near band edge emission as observed from photoluminescence spectra. Presence of impurities and defects were identified from various other emissions as well as from the bandgap variation obtained from reflectance spectra. The third order nonlinearity of manganese doped zinc selenide nanoparticles were calculated by the standard Z-scan technique using 532 nm CW DPSS and nanopulsed Nd:YAG laser. Mn doped ZnSe nanoparticles which exhibits near resonant excited state absorption were found to be an ideal candidate to be exploited as optical limiters in protecting optical components from high intense laser pulses. Further, lower onset optical limiting threshold under pulsed laser excitation of manganese doped zinc selenides (2.92 × 1012 Wm−2) compared to pure zinc selenide (4.98 × 1012 Wm−2) confirms that doping of Mn in ZnSe can yield efficient energy absorbing optical limiters. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.