Objective To compare the efficacy and safety of dynamic hip screw (DHS) + anti-rotation screw and cannulated screw alone for femoral neck fracture in adults. Methods PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, SinoMed, Wanfang, and Chongqing VIP database were searched for the literature related to the comparison between DHS + anti-rotation screw and cannulated screw alone for femoral neck fracture in adults from the establishment of databases to 2022. RevMan 5.3 software was used for meta-analysis. Results Finally, 25 clinical studies were included, including 8 randomized controlled trials and 17 observational studies, 5 in English and 20 in Chinese. There were a total of 2099 patients, including 989 in the DHS + anti-rotation screw group and 1110 in the cannulated screw group. The meta-analysis results showed that the incidence of bone nonunion [odds ratio (OR)=0.29, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.17, 0.48)], incidence of femoral head necrosis [OR=0.48, 95% CI (0.27, 0.88)], failure rate of internal fixation [OR=0.28, 95% CI (0.15, 0.51)] in the DHS + anti-rotation screw group were lower than those in the cannulated screw group (P<0.05). The surgical duration [mean difference (MD)=9.91, 95% CI (6.78, 13.05)], incision length [MD=1.25, 95% CI (0.15, 2.35)], and Harris score [MD=6.77, 95% CI (4.66, 8.88)] in the DHS + anti-rotation screw group were higher than those in the cannulated screw group (P<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference in intraoperative bleeding volume, Visual Analogue Scale score, hospital stay, and fracture healing time between the two groups (P>0.05). The incidence of bone nonunion in the DHS + anti-rotation screw group after Pauwels type Ⅲ fracture [OR=0.16, 95% CI (0.05, 0.50)] was lower than that in the cannulated screw group (P<0.05), and there was no statistically significant difference in the incidence of femoral head necrosis between the two groups (P>0.05). Conclusions For femoral neck fracture in adults, DHS + anti-rotation screw can reduce the incidence of bone nonunion, femoral head necrosis, and internal fixation failure compared with cannulated screw alone, and has a higher Harris score, but the surgical duration and incision are longer. Overall, DHS + anti-rotation screw are better at reducing the incidence of complications than cannulated screws alone.