The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) systems and networks has led to increased challenges regarding security and system reliability. Anomaly detection has become a critical task for identifying system flaws, cyberattacks, and failures in IoT environments. This study proposes a hybrid deep learning (DL) approach combining Autoencoders (AE) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to detect anomalies in real-time within IoT networks. In this model, normal data trends were learned in an unsupervised manner using an AE, while temporal dependencies in time-series data were captured through the use of an LSTM network. Experiments conducted on publicly available IoT datasets, namely the Kaggle IoT Network Traffic Dataset and the Numenta Anomaly Benchmark (NAB) dataset, demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model outperforms conventional machine learning (ML) algorithms, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF), in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The hybrid model achieved a recall of 96.2%, a precision of 95.8%, and an accuracy of 97.5%, with negligible false negatives and false positives. Furthermore, the model is capable of handling real-time data with a latency of just 75 milliseconds, making it suitable for large-scale IoT applications. The performance evaluation, which utilized a diverse set of anomaly scenarios, highlighted the robustness and scalability of the proposed model. The Kaggle IoT Network Traffic Dataset, consisting of approximately 630,000 records across six months and 115 features, along with the NAB dataset, which includes around 365,000 sensor readings and 55 features, provided comprehensive data for evaluating the model’s effectiveness in real-world conditions. These findings suggest that the hybrid DL framework offers a robust, scalable, and efficient solution for anomaly detection in IoT networks, contributing to enhanced system security and dependability.