Fiber-reinforced composites’ main drawbacks are their restricted toughness and vulnerability to localized damage, which limited their use in many high-performance applications. Despite prior studies focused on tensile and flexural properties, this study offers insight into the damage tolerance and material performance in hybrid laminates of expanded steel mesh and glass fiber subjected to fracture and interlaminar shear loading. The goal was to examine how hybridization variables, including fine, medium, and coarse steel meshes, vertical and horizontal loading mesh orientation, and the arrangement of mesh layers in the surface and core, affect fracture and shear performance. Hybrid laminates were manufactured utilizing hand layup method, adopting AISI 304 expanded steel mesh and woven glass fiber in an epoxy matrix. Mechanical testing followed ASTM D2344 for short-beam shear and ASTM D5045 for notched three-point bending. The results revealed that hybrid composites exhibited stable load-bearing performance without brittle failure but enhanced damage tolerance. Compared to pure glass laminates, these laminates demonstrated improvements of up to 198.6 % (in SHO3) and 13.15 % (in SVO3) in terms of GIC and KIC, respectively. In certain core arrangements, there was a 1.5 to 10.9 % increase in ILS strength, while contrary surface arrangements experienced up to a − 29.8 % drop in ILS strength. The study revealed that by properly optimizing mesh size, position, and loading orientation, composites can be customized for engineering structures that demand balanced strength, fracture resistance, and damage tolerance.