A practical four-step synthesis of pymetrozine is reported, starting from a green chemical dimethyl carbonate and using the key intermediate methyl (E)-1-(2-oxopropyl)-2-(pyridin-3-ylmethylene)hydrazine-1-carboxylate. The main advantages of the route include inexpensive starting materials, environmental friendliness, short synthetic route, easy-to-use synthetic method and acceptable overall yield. A scale-up experiment was carried out to provide pymetrozine with 99.84% purity in 53.2% total yield.