The research work proposed an economic ring planar antenna for Wi-Fi, industrial scientific and medical (ISM) band, and sub-7 GHz applications. A fractal technique is utilized to develop the patch geometry. The antenna is composed of a 27.16 mm × 37.54 mm × 1.6 mm Flame Retardant-4 (FR-4) substrate. A dual-band antenna is proposed that separately covers Wi-Fi and ISM (2.4 GHz) band and sub-7 GHz applications. Introduced notch band (2.49–2.89 GHz) among two bands (2.40–2.49 GHz), and (2.89–6.46 GHz) eliminates the applications interference issues of wideband antennas. The antenna is loaded with a fractal inner patch having a radius half of the inner radius of the ring. Interconnection of the outer ring with the inner patch ascribed dual-band and eliminates in-band applications interference, but it lowers the gain near 3.5 GHz. This decreased gain is further increased by filling the inner patch with the complementary split ring resonator (CSRR). With − 10 dB fractional bandwidths (FBW) of 0.04% and 76.24%, respectively, the antenna achieves peak gains of 6.86 dBi, 5.24 dBi, and 7.46 dBi at 2.45 GHz, 3.28 GHz, and 5.50 GHz frequencies. The first FBW is perfectly suitable to use antenna for Wi-Fi, and ISM band, and the second FBW is suitable to cover a wide portion of sub-7 GHz and covers wireless bands n77/78/79, Wi-Fi 5/5.2 GHz for 5G, and emerging 6G applications. The antenna is tested by microwave analyzer and anechoic chamber. The associated results found an excellent match and validated the designed antenna.