Environmental contamination has been a major source of concern for the world in recent decades. Pollutants in the environment are harmful entities that can cause severe diseases and pose a serious threat to the ecosystem. As a result, it becomes compulsion for modern researchers to develop such remarkable sensors that are capable of detecting contaminants in aqueous environment. In order to develop a sensitive and selective sensor for the targeted determination of Bisphenol-A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting compound, a very efficient Cd/rGO composite was synthesized through a green microwave-assisted route. The prepared Cd/rGO composite was characterized by different analytical tools, e.g. XRD, EDX, FTIR and SEM, to study phase structure, elemental composition, functionalities, and sheets morphology, respectively. To evaluate the sensing properties of fabricated sensing material glassy carbon electrode was modified and resulting Cd/rGO/GCE was initially electrochemically characterized using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (ESI). At optimized conditions such as scan rate of 70 mV/s, PBS electrolyte of pH 7, potential window in the range of 0.0–0.9 V vs Ag/AgCl; the fabricated Cd/rGO/GCE-based sensor showed the outstanding response for BPA. Under the linear concentration range from 5 to 110 µM, the LOD and LOQ were calculated as 0.041 and 0.13 µM, respectively. Moreover, the analytical applicability of the proposed sensor was tested in different water samples, which revealed acceptable recovery values from 91.1 to 101.1%. The comprehensive experimental studies witness the reliability of the proposed method and confirm that it could be a promising electrochemical sensor to be used at the commercial level. Graphical abstract