photogenerated carrier relaxation process and terahertz conductivity of Cd<sub>0.96</sub>Zn<sub>0.04</sub>Te are investigated by optical-pump terahertz-probe spectroscopy at room temperature. With photoexcitation at 800 nm, the photogenerated carrier recovery process can be fitted with a single exponential curve, and its recovery time lasts several nanoseconds, which decreases with photogenerated carrier densities at a certain range of photogenerated carrier densities, relating to the radiative recombination of electron-hole pairs. The transient transmittance change of terahertz pulse remains the same with increasing photogenerated carrier densities from 4.51×10<sup>16</sup> cm<sup>-3</sup>to 1.81×10<sup>17</sup> cm<sup>-3</sup>, due to the number of loss carriers by defect trapping approximates the augment carriers by photoexcitation. As the photogenerated carrier densities increase from 1.81×10<sup>17</sup>cm<sup>-3</sup>to 1.44×10<sup>18</sup>cm<sup>-3</sup>, the magnitude of photoinduced absorption increases linearly with photogenerated carrier densities due to most of the defects are occupied. When the photogenerated carrier densities are higher than 1.44×10<sup>18</sup>cm<sup>-3</sup>, the magnitude of photoinduced absorption remains almost the same due to the absorption of THz wave800 nm pump pulse reaches saturation. The evolution of complex conductivity with photogenerated carrier density at the delay time of about 50 ps can be well fitted with Drude-Smith model. Our analysis provides important data support and theoretical basis for design and fabrication of Cd<sub>1-x</sub>Zn<sub>x</sub>Te detection.