Several recent studies have revealed that microRNAs (miRNAs) have a role in carcinogenesis and cancer development, and that it is stably detectable in plasma/serum. The aim of this study was to test whether miR‑483-3p as well as miR‑21 could be plasma biomarkers for PDAC. The plasma samples were obtained from three groups including 32 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients, 12 patients with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) patients and 30 healthy controls (HC). We evaluated the plasma miR‑483-3p and miR‑21 expression level by quantitative RT-PCR. We compared the differences in the plasma level of these miRNAs among the three groups, and investigated the relevance of their plasma expression level to the clinical factors in PDAC. The expressions of miR‑483-3p and miR‑21 were detected in all examined plasma samples. The plasma expression levels of these miRNAs were significantly higher in PDAC compared to HC (P<0.01). The plasma miR‑483-3p expression was significantly higher in PDAC patients than IPMN patients (P<0.05). The plasma miR‑21 level was associated with advanced stage (P<0.05), metastasis to lymph node and liver (P<0.01), and shorter survival (P<0.01) of the PDAC patients. Together, these findings suggest that measurement of the plasma miR‑483-3p level is useful for discriminating PDAC from IPMN, and that the plasma miR‑21 level predicts outcome of PDAC patients.