In this paper, the complexity reduction method for QCELP speech coder (IS-96) without any perfomrance degradation is proposed for the vecoder of CDMA digital cellular system. The energy terms in pitch parameter search and codebook search routines that require large computations are calculated recursively by utilizing the overlapped structure of code vectors in adaptive codebook and excitation codebook. The additional complexity reduction in the codebook search routine can be achieved by using a simple form in calculation of the energy term when the initial codebook value is zero. In the case of lower transmission rates such as 4,2,1 kbps, the complexity reduction by recursive calulations of energy term is increased.