In a parabolic dish system, the heat losses from the cavity receiver significantly suppress the system’s efficiency and may increase its overall cost. Several existing researches have numerically and experimentally developed the different cavity receiver models by modifying their inclinations, design geometrics, and structure. The conductive loss does not occur much in the cavity receivers compared to the convective loss. So, the analysis of convective loss is more critical in the cavity receivers; however, the accurate prediction of convection loss is quite complex due to the temperature distribution near the cavity. This prime aim of the paper is to comprehensively review the existing literature related to design configurations of cavity receivers and heat loss analysis to set a platform for performance improvement via design modifications. The study emphasizes the effect of geometric parameters like the structure of cavity receivers, shape and sizes, and angle of inclinations with the ground. Structural configurations, especially the hemispherical, cylindrical, conical, and trapezoidal cavity receivers utilized for the solar dish collector (SDC), are investigated between the years 1980 to 2022. A comparison is made based on heat loss models and research outcomes. Besides, the Nusselt correlation model used for predicting heat losses is also carried out in this review by varying the effects such as inclination, aperture ratio, wind effect, etc. This review supports the solar cavity designers for experimentally investigating and simulating a new modified solar cavity receiver with minimization and accurately predicting convective losses.