question: Recently, a new lifetime distribution known as a generalized Quasi Lindley distribution (GQLD) is suggested. In this paper, we modified the GQLD and suggested a two parameters lifetime distribution called as a weighted generalized Quasi Lindley distribution (WGQLD). The main mathematical properties of the WGQLD including the moments, coefficient of variation, coefficient of skewness, coefficient of kurtosis, stochastic ordering, median deviation, harmonic mean, and reliability functions are derived. The model parameters are estimated by using the ordinary least squares, weighted least squares, maximum likelihood, maximum product of spacing’s, Anderson-Darling and Cramer-von-Mises methods. The performances of the proposed estimators are compared based on numerical calculations for various values of the distribution parameters and sample sizes in terms of the mean squared error (MSE) and estimated values (Es). To demonstrate the applicability of the new model, four applications of various real data sets consist of the infected cases in Covid-19 in Algeria and Saudi Arabia, carbon fibers and rain fall are analyzed for illustration. It turns out that the WGQLD is empirically better than the other competing distributions considered in this study. © 2021 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press.