The synthesis of non-cadmium based carbohydrate functionalized inorganic fluorescent nanoparticles has emerging potential applications in advanced biomedical science. Herein, we synthesized red fluorescent maltose functionalized silver clusters (AgC) using cysteamine modified maltose as a capping agent without adding any external reductant. The silver clusters had a hydrodynamic diameter of less than 5 nm with good colloidal, photochemical and fluorescent stability with a reasonably good fluorescence quantum yield. Maltose functionalized fluorescent silver clusters were produced in a one step procedure. Therefore, we exploited the maltose functionalized silver clusters for the visible detection of specific glycoprotein concanavalin-A. Because the synthesized red fluorescent maltose functionalized silver clusters possesses good photochemical stability and green light excitation, we used maltose functionalized red fluorescent AgC for HeLa cell labelling study.