The aim of this work is to study the suitability of two newly introduced bio-inspired algorithms, namely the dragonfly algorithm (DA) and the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) for thinning a linear antenna array. In array thinning, a fully populated array is chosen as a starting point, and a thinned array is obtained through careful deactivation of select sensors such that the residual active sensors enable the array to achieve a desired side-lobe performance. In this paper, we apply the binary versions of DA and SSA, namely the binary dragonfly algorithm (BDA), and the binary salp swarm algorithm (BSSA) to thin a symmetric linear array with uniform inter-element spacing of half wavelength. Extensive simulations were performed in MATLAB by considering arrays of different sizes. The results obtained from BDA and BSSA were compared against those obtained from the binary versions of two benchmark algorithms, namely the genetic algorithm (GA) and the gray wolf optimizer (GWO). Relative side-lobe level (RSLL) and filling percentage were used as performance comparison metrics. It has been observed that both BDA and BSSA offer promising results in line with BGA and BGWO. More specifically, BDA was found to be faster than BSSA. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.