We carried out temperature and magnetic field-dependent magnetic measurements to understand the evolution of magnetic non-collinearity near the antiferromagnetic phase transition in conjunction with the onset of significant change in magnetic entropy. We observed the maximum magnetic entropy change just before the magnetic ordering of Cr3+ in YCrO3 with the maximum change in magnetic entropy of ~ −0.38 Jkg−1K−1 at 8 T external field. Thought the magnetization is linear in higher fields (3 T–8 T), a significant deviation is observed in lower fields, substantiating the presence of weak ferromagnetism in YCrO3 with the antiferromagnetic ground state. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd