The proposed work intend to develop a compact ultrathin ultra-wideband (UWB) metamaterial absorber with a feature of near to unity absorption. The proposed absorber is identified by one consolidated patch in combination with L-shaped patches. The proposed absorber provides more than 97% absorption from 13.6 to 18.5 GHz, the operating band of the absorber is ultra-wide with a bandwidth of 4.9 GHz. The proposed structure exhibits full width half maximum (FWHM) of approximately 6.6 GHz from 12.5 to 19.1 GHz. The design of the structure is having a thickness of 0.072 λ₀ relative to the lowest frequency (at 13.58 GHz) of the UWB. The structure with compact size (9 mm × 9 mm × 1.6 mm) compensates for the marginal rise in dimension with ultra-wideband absorption having an absorptivity of above 97% in comparison to existing UWB absorber available in commercially exploitable microwave frequency. The evolution process incorporates incremental changes in the design of the absorber thereby witnessing experimentally verified more than 97% absorptivity. The in-depth analysis of the proposed structure is done with incident and polarisation angle analysis. The current and field distribution validates the effectiveness of the UWB metamaterial based microwave absorber.