We analyzed the unsteady magnetohydrodynamic radiative flow and heat transfer characteristics of a dusty nanofluid over an exponentially permeable stretching surface in presence of volume fraction of dust and nano particles. We considered two types of nanofluids namely Cu-water and CuO-water embedded with conducting dust particles. The governing equations are transformed into nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using similarity transformation and solved numerically using Runge–Kutta based shooting technique. The effects of non-dimensional governing parameters namely magneticfield parameter, mass concentration of dust particles, fluid particle interaction parameter, volume fraction of dust particles, volume fraction of nano particles, unsteadiness parameter, exponential parameter, radiation parameter and suction/injection parameter on velocity profiles for fluid phase, dust phase and temperature profiles are discussed and presented through graphs. Also, friction factor and Nusselt numbers are discussed and presented for two dusty nanofluids separately. Comparisons of the present study were made with existing studies under some special assumptions. The present results have an excellent agreement with existing studies. Results indicated that the enhancement in fluid particle interaction increases the heat transfer rate and depreciates the wall friction. Also, radiation parameter has the tendency to increase the temperature profiles of the dusty nanofluid. © 2015 Karabuk University