Objective To systematically review the efficacy of salbutamol for infants with bronchiolitis. Methods Databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2016), CBM, VIP, WanFang Data and CNKI were searched from inception to March 2016 to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about salbutamol for infants with bronchiolitis. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 20 RCTs, involving 1 735 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that, compared with the control group, the salbutamol group had shorter cough relief time (MD= –1.44 d, 95%CI –1.93 to –0.95, P < 0.000 01), dyspnear relief time (MD= –0.87 d, 95%CI –1.17 to –0.56, P < 0.000 01), asthmatic remission time (MD= –1.38 d, 95%CI –1.93 to –0.83, P < 0.000 01), pulmonary rales disappear time (MD= –1.58 d, 95%CI –2.00 to –1.17, P < 0.000 01) and average hospitalization time (MD= –1.40 d, 95%CI –2.12 to –0.68, P=0.000 1), but could not improve clinical severity score (MD= –0.17, 95%CI –0.35 to 0.00, P=0.05). Conclusion Current evidence indicates that salbutamol can significantly improve the bronchiolitis with cough, dyspnea and wheezes symptoms and lung’s signs, shorten the length of hospital stay, but can not improve the clinical severity score of infants with bronchiolitis. Due to the limited quality of included studies, more high quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.