In this paper, energy and exergy performance of an external type spiral tube receiver for a solar parabolic dish concentrator is experimentally analyzed and presented. Performance evaluation is done at three different radiation conditions. The receiver is tested in the temperature range of 30 °C–100 °C with water as heat transfer fluid and at a flow rate of 1.5 L per minute. The overall heat loss coefficient of the receiver estimated from the stagnation test is found to be 182 W/m2K. The average thermal and exergy efficiencies of the receiver was determined to be 56.21% and 5.45% respectively under an average beam radiation of 750 W/m2. The variation trend of thermal efficiency of receiver is similar to that of difference between temperature of the heat transfer fluid at receiver inlet and outlet. The results show that this light weight, low cost receiver has potential to be employed with solar parabolic dish concentrator for process heating applications. •Spiral tube receiver is developed for solar parabolic dish concentrator.•Experimental performance analysis were carried out at different radiation levels.•The average thermal efficiency of the spiral tube receiver was obtained as 56.2%.•The receiver has potential to be used in the applications of temperature up to 100 °C.