Objectives To assess the relationship between subclinical hyperthyroidism and the incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data and CBM databases were searched for studies on the relationship between subclinical hyperthyroidism and the incidence of CHD from inception to October 2016. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0 software. Results In total, 14 cohort studies were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that subclinical hyperthyroidism was associated with the incidence of coronary heart disease (RR=1.19, 95%CI 1.01 to 1.40, P=0.04) and all-cause mortality (RR=1.36, 95%CI 1.11 to 1.67, P=0.003). Conclusions Subclinical hyperthyroidism is associated with an increased risk of CHD and all-cause mortality. Due to the limitation of quality and quantity of the studies, the above conclusions are required to be verified by large-scale and high quality research.