Objective?To evaluate the accuracy of magnifying endoscopy with narrow-band imaging (ME-NBI) for detecting early esophageal cancer invasion depth. Methods We searched Embase, Pubmed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI, Wanfang and VIP databases from inception to Feb.2016. Domestic articles related to the accuracy of ME-NBI detecting the early esophageal cancer invasion depth were collected comprehensively. The quality of the papers was evaluated by quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS). Data analysis was conducted by Stata 12.0 software. Results Seven group data from six studies including 319 patients with 366 lesions met the inclusion criteria. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, SROC area under the curve and DOR were 93.8 % (95 % CI: 0.886~0.967), 75.2 % (95 % CI: 0.658~0.827), 3.779 (95 % CI: 2.685～5.318), 0.083 (95 % CI: 0.044~0.155), 0.80 (95 % CI: 0.770~0.840) and 45.658 (95 % CI: 21.006~99.240). Conclusions The results suggest that ME-NBI may be an effective tool for detecting invasion depth of early esophageal cancer, which plays an important role in clinical selection of surgical approach and treatment.