Summary: For the past 5 years, localization has become an emerging area in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which can be applicable for diverse applications, such as outdoor environments and monitoring of objects located in indoor environments. The major constraint in localization is allocating a location for each node as diverse sensor nodes are employed to retrieve the information in WSN. Recent research works in node localization have generally moved by multihop range‐free localization approaches for achieving high accuracy through reducing the localization error among the actual and estimated position of nodes. The conventional approaches are aimed to improve the localization accuracy without considering efficiency concerned with algorithm's convergence time and energy costs. The main intent of this paper is to model the WSN localization model, which focuses on the localization of anchor nodes concerning the target nodes. The multiobjective function is developed by considering the distance function, received signal strength (RSS), and energy. Here, a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm named hybrid cuckoo–red deer algorithm (HC‐RDA) with the integration of red deer algorithm (RDA) and cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) is adopted for localization of unknown nodes. The fitness function of the developed model is the minimization of the derived multiobjective function. Both simulation studies and theoretical analysis demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve localization performance with a better convergence rate, thus ensuring high localization accuracy compared to conventional metaheuristic models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]