Objective To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for chlamydia trachomatis (CT). Methods The diagnosis trials on EIA for CT were searched in the databases such as PubMed (1966 to Dec. 2011), The Cochrane Library (Issue 12, 2011), EMbase (1974 to Dec. 2011), CNKI (1994 to Dec. 2011), VIP (1989 to Dec. 2011) and CBM (1978 to Dec. 2011), meanwhile the manual and other retrieves were also conducted. Two reviewers evaluated the quality of the included trials according to the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS), and then meta-analysis was performed using Meta Analyst and RevMan 5.0 software. Results A total of 17 trials involving 9 461 participants were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that the weighted sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio, and the area under SROC curve were 0.847 (95%CI 0.571 to 0.995), 0.964 (95%CI 0.890 to 0.994), 25.972 (95%CI 18.587 to 36.293), 0.156 (95%CI 0.114 to 0.212), 228.875 (95%CI 127.136 to 412.028), and 0.953, respectively. Conclusion EIA for CT has higher sensitivity and specificity, so EIA is recommended for preliminary screening CT and diagnosing the highly suspected cases or the patients without obvious signs and symptoms.