BackgroundThe carbazole skeleton is an important structural motif occurring naturally or synthesized chemically and has antihistaminic, antioxidant, antitumor, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory activities.ObjectivesThis study aimed to design and synthesize a novel series of carbazole derivatives and evaluate their antiproliferative and antioxidant activities.MethodsThe synthesized compounds were characterized utilizing HRMS,1H-, and13CAPT-NMR, and assessed for their anticancer, antifibrotic, and antioxidant effects utilizing reference biomedical procedures. In addition, the AutoDock Vina application was used to perform in-silico docking computations.ResultsA series of carbazole derivatives were synthesized and characterized in the current study. Compounds10and11were found to have a stronger antiproliferative effect than compounds2–5against HepG2, HeLa, and MCF7 cancer cell lines with IC50values of 7.68, 10.09, and 6.44 µM, respectively. Moreover, compound 9 showed potent antiproliferative activity against HeLa cancer cell lines with an IC50value of 7.59 µM. However, except for compound5, all of the synthesized compounds showed moderate antiproliferative activities against CaCo-2 with IC50values in the range of 43.7–187.23 µM. All of these values were compared with the positive control anticancer drug 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU). In addition, compound9showed the most potent anti-fibrotic compound, and the cellular viability of LX-2 was found 57.96% at 1 µM concentration in comparison with the positive control 5-FU. Moreover, 4 and 9 compounds showed potent antioxidant activities with IC50values of 1.05 ± 0.77 and 5.15 ± 1.01 µM, respectively.ConclusionMost of the synthesized carbazole derivatives showed promising antiproliferative, antioxidant, and antifibrotic biological effects, and further in-vivo investigations are needed to approve or disapprove these results.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13065-023-00961-y.