Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are dynamic, self-organizing communication environments without a fixed infrastructure where nodes are interconnected. This paper is a comprehensive study on the performance evaluation of our newly designed hybrid routing protocol compared to established protocols like Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) and Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV). The hybrid protocol takes advantage of proactive and reactive routing techniques by incorporating components from both DSDV and AODV. The proactive routing protocol is a kind of routing protocol that keeps track of the routes and network topology continuously by maintaining a routing table, whereas the Reactive routing protocol does not. In this research, DSDV is the primary protocol, and AODV is initiated if no direct connection is initially found to the destination. The nodes are initially flooded to find their locations, but if the nodes change their position while packets are being delivered, it triggers the system. AODV is activated at that moment to ensure maximum packet delivery. The NS-3 network simulator conducts extensive simulation tests that assess the hybrid protocol’s throughput, packet delivery ratio, energy consumption, and delay. According to our findings, the hybrid protocol uses about the same amount of energy as DSDV while achieving higher throughput and a maximum packet delivery ratio (about 30–35% more than AODV and 22–26% more than DSDV). However, in contrast to DSDV and AODV, it shows larger delay values (20% more).