MicroRNA-182 (miR-182) is overexpressed in several tumors and is found to be associated with adverse clinical characteristics. However, less information on the circulating miR-182 in pancreatic cancer (PCa) is available. The aim of this study was to detect the circulating miR-182 in plasma and to explore its potential diagnostic and prognostic value in PCa. Real-time quantitative PCR was employed to detect circulating miR-182 from 109 PCa and 38 chronic pancreatitis (CP) as well as 50 healthy controls. Our findings revealed that the level of circulating miR-182 in PCa patients was higher than that in CP patients and healthy controls (both at P < 0.05), which was significantly associated with clinical stages (P < 0.001) and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.018). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.775, and the optimal cutoff value was 1.63, thus providing a sensitivity of 64.1 % and a specificity of 82.6 %. The diagnosis capability of circulating miR-182 was significantly higher than that of CA19-9, and the combination of two molecules had higher diagnosis capacity (sensitivity of 84.68 % and specificity of 86.77 %). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that the elevated circulating miR-182 was closely correlated with both shorten overall survival (OS) (P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (DFS) (P < 0.001). Cox analysis indicated that it was an independent prognostic factor for OS and DFS. Our data suggest that circulating miR-182 may be a potential and useful noninvasive tumor marker for diagnosis and prognosis of pancreatic cancer.