The convective heat loss from cavity receiver in parabolic dish system is the main parameter to determine the thermal performance and cost effectiveness of the system. The main difficulty of designing the cavity receiver is determining the convection heat loss. In recent years, exhaustive numerical and experimental investigation has been done on natural convection with varying cavity shapes. Combined natural and forced convection testing as well as experimental investigations on cylindrical model receivers with constant heat flux boundary condition has also been carried out. The recent studies related to natural convection/combined natural and forced convection with constant heat flux boundary condition may provide more accurate and valuable information for the solar receiver design, which had, in earlier cases, been ignored by solar collector system designers. This paper presents a comprehensive review and systematic summarization of the different convection correlations developed by several authors to model convective heat losses from cylindrical cavity receivers and progress in recent years. This paper has covered the early models, the new modified models that were subsequently developed and the recent models, which are considered to be more accurate in estimating convection heat loss. The main aim of this paper is to compare the correlation developed by several authors to estimate heat losses from cylindrical cavity receiver in recent years. Finally, future development directions and the issues that need to be further investigated in detail are also suggested. It is believed that this comprehensive and systematic review will be beneficial to the designer for experimental investigation, simulation, and correct convection heatloss estimation of the solar cavity receiver to improve the thermal performance of a solar parabolic dish receiver system.