<p>Machining of nickel-based superalloys encounters significant difficulties due to their properties, such as toughness, high strength, and low thermal conductivity at elevated temperatures. Besides this, chip formation and its removal are challenging during conventional drilling (CD) of these materials. Apart from this, the environmental aspect associated with emissions from cutting fluids and their disposal is a key difficulty. In order to address these issues in CD, this study focuses on enhancing the drilling process by integrating the effect of ultrasonic in CD process with textured tools and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL). Therefore, to improve the performance and sustainability of the CD process, a comparative analysis was conducted to evaluate the effects of ultrasonic vibration and a bio-inspired textured drill bit, combined with green cutting fluid. The study focuses on key performance indicators such as cutting forces, surface roughness, and chip morphology across different drilling schemes. The bio-inspired texture was made on a drill bit using a laser with four different snakeskin patterns, including ellipse (T1, reticulated python), diamond (T2, ball python), hexagonal (T3, drymarchon corais), and triangular (T4, rattlesnake). The results demonstrated a substantial reduction in thrust force by 70.73% and an improvement in surface roughness by 65.53% when employing ultrasonic-assisted drilling with a bio-inspired textured tool, compared to CD. The findings of this study suggest that incorporating bio-inspired patterns, in conjunction with sustainable drilling approaches, can lead to improved machining performance.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>