Objective To systematically review the efficacy and safety of totally laparoscopic total gastrectomy (TLTG) versus laparoscopic-assisted total gastrectomy (LATG) for patients with gastric cancer. Methods Databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CBM, WanFang Data and CNKI were searched to collect cohort studies about TLTG vs. LATG for gastric cancer from inception to February 28th 2017. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Meta-analysis was then performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of six cohort studies were included, of which 407 cases were in the TLTG group, and 315 cases were in the LATG group. The results of meta-analysis showed that compared with LATG group, patients in TLTG group had shorter operation time (MD=–8.97, 95%CI –16.21 to –1.73, P=0.02), and initial postoperative feeding time (MD=–0.30, 95%CI –0.57 to –0.03, P=0.03). However, the anastomic time, bleeding volume, the number of dissected lymph nodes, proximal resection margin, initial flatus time, postoperative hospital stay, overall postoperative complications, anastomotic fistula, and anastomotic stenosis were similar between two groups (all P values>0.05)． Conclusions Compared with LATG, TLTG has shorter operation and recovery time for patients with gastric cancer. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify above conclusions.