The present article investigates the effect of cutouts, porosity inclusion, and hygro-thermal environment on the vibrational characteristics of sandwich functionally graded material (FGM) plates resting on Pasternak elastic foundation. The governing equations for the sandwich FGM plates have been developed using the finite element method (FEM) with the conjunction of non-polynomial-based higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT). The trigonometric shear-strain shape function has been used for the first time for sandwich FGM plates. The effective material properties with porosity inclusions have been computed using modified power–law distribution. The present results have been acquired by employing a C0 continuity isoparametric finite element (FE), using 4-noded elements with 7-DOF's per node. The accuracy of the current solution has been confirmed by convergence and validation studies. The influence of circular cutout, elastic foundations, hygro-thermal conditions, and geometric and boundary conditions on the vibrational frequency of porous sandwich FGM plates have been discussed in detail. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.