Juvenile hormone esterase (JHE) is a key enzyme for insects, playing an important role in the regulation of insect growth, development, diapause and reproduction.  We identified a complete putative JHE of Cydia pomonella (CpJHE-like) which is comprised of a 1 761 bp coding sequence (CDS) encoding 587 amino acid residues from the transcriptome data.  The deduced protein sequence of CpJHE-like showed the highest identity of 60.44% with the Adoxophyes honmai JHE (AhJHE) and the minimal identity of 25.81% with Aedes aegypti JHE (AaJHE).  CpJHE-like exhibited all the seven typical motifs of the functional JHEs and had the highly consistent tertiary structure with Manduca sexta JHE (MsJHE).  Phylogenetic analysis showed that the CpJHE-like was close to two JHEs from the family Tortricidae.  The CpJHE-like transcript level take a leap in the 3-day-old fifth instar larva, increased about 300-fold compared to the basal level.  Tissue-specific expression profile showed that the CpJHE-like transcript was expressed mainly in the fat body.  This study indicates that the CpJHE-like is the functional JHE, which may play vital roles in the development and reproduction of C. pomonella.