ObjectivesTo review the pharmacoeconomic evaluation of rheumatoid arthritis patients with an inadequate efficacy or intolerance with conventional synthetic disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (csDMARDs).MethodsCNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library were electronically searched to collect pharmacoeconomic studies about rheumatoid arthritis patients with an inadequate efficacy or intolerance with csDMARDs from inception to February 2019. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed risk of bias of the included studies, then, descriptive analysis was performed.ResultsA total of 16 studies were included, where most compared the economics of different treatment methods from the perspective of the payer by cohort or individual model. The economic costs in the studies were primarily on direct cost. Sensitivity analyses were used to prove the robustness of the main analysis in each study. Biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) might be more cost-effective than csDMARDs. In addition, compared with the bDMARDs, new-marketed targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (tsDMARDs) might be more cost-effective.ConclusionsIt could be considered to implement more new marketed tsDMARDs to improve patients’ condition to reduce the economic burden and optimize the allocation of health care resources.