The current study deals with the preparation and development of nanomaterials based on iron, copper, chromium or cobalt to study their antibacterial and catalytic properties. To achieve this, the different metals were dispersed in the material MIL-101(Cr) by an ultrasonic-assisted method and then treated by chemical reduction in order to produce corresponding metal nanoparticles (MNPs). The obtained nanocatalysts MIL-101(Cr)/MNPs were characterized by various techniques such as XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, FTIR; TGA, XRF, Adsorption-desoprtion of nitrogen at 77 K and UV–vis DR. The results showed that the nanocatalysts consist of a mixture of metal phases and oxides. All the prepared nanocatalysts were evaluated based on their performance in reducing the methylene blue (MB) dye in the presence of NaBH4 as reducing agent, for selection of the optimal catalyst. The best catalytic activity was obtained by the MIL-101 (Cr)/CuNPs nanocatalyst in which 6 min was sufficient to reduce the MB dye and the recorded rate constant kapp was 0.503 min−1. The performance of this catalyst was evaluated by varying the effects of three important parameters such as catalyst loading and the concentration of NaBH4 and MB dye. The study of the effects of these three parameters on the reduction process reveals that more than 99% of MB dye was reduced using 0.6 mM of MB dye, 6.8 mM of NaBH4 and 3 mg of nanocatalyst. The kinetic study shows that the reduction of MB dye by the MOF-101(Cr)/CuNPs nanocatalyst follows pseudo-first order kinetics. In addition, the MIL-101(Cr)/CoNPs and MIL-101(Cr)/CuNPs samples demonstrated efficacy at inhibiting bacterial and fungal growth. Hence, it is concluded through this work that the nature, size and concentration of nanoparticles present in the MOF matrix are the key parameters that can influence the catalytic and antibacterial properties of these MNP-loaded MIL-101(Cr) systems.