We report on the structure and physical properties of the polycrystalline PdTe superconductor, which is synthesized by the solid state reaction route via the quartz vacuum encapsulation technique at 750 °C. The as synthesized compound is crystallized in hexagonal crystal structure with P63/mmc space group. Both transport and magnetic measurements showed that PdTe is a bulk superconductor below 4.5 K. Isothermal magnetization (MH) and magneto-transport (R(T)H) measurements provided the values of the lower (Hc1) and upper (Hc2) critical fields as 250 Oe and 1200 Oe respectively at 2 K, establishing that the compound is clearly a type-II superconductor. The coherence length (ξ0) and Ginzburg-Landau parameter (κ) are estimated from the experimentally determined upper and lower critical fields, and are 449. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.