Objectives To systematically review the influence of positive margin on outcome after partial nephrectomy (PN). Methods CCRCT, PubMed, EMbase, Sinomed, WanFang Data and CNKI databases were electronically searched to collect clinical studies on influence of positive margin on outcome after PN from inception to December 31st, 2019. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed risk of bias of included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.4 software. Results A total of 22 cohort studies involving 20 822 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that positive margin after PN could increase the rate of postoperative local recurrence (OR=4.18, 95%CI 2.88 to 6.05, P<0.000 01), distant metastasis (OR=5.28, 95%CI 2.84 to 9.81,P<0.000 01) and total mortality (OR=1.54, 95%CI 1.19 to 1.99,P=0.0010). However, there were no differences on overall survival (OR=0.64, 95% CI 0.34 to 1.19, P=0.16), distant metastasis free survival (OR=0.70, 95%CI 0.26 to 1.84, P=0.46), cancer specific survival (OR=0.43, 95% CI 0.06 to 3.01, P=0.40) and disease-free survival (OR=0.81, 95%CI 0.35 to 1.85, P=0.61) between two groups. Conclusions Current evidence suggests that positive margin after PN may be associated with tumor progression, however, it may not affect patient survival. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify above conclusions.