Objective To systematically evaluate the effectiveness and safety of laparoscopic hepatectomy (LH) versus open hepatectomy (OH) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods Databases including PubMed, EMbase, MEDLINE, SCI, CNKI, CBM, WanFang Data and The Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2012) were searched to collect the randomized controlled trails (RCTs) and non-RCTs about LH versus OH for HCC. The retrieval time was from inception to August 2012. The studies were screened according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the data were extracted and the quality was evaluated by 2 reviewers independently. Then the meta-analysis was conducted using RevMan 5.1 software. Results A total of 13 non-RCTs involving 701 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: Compared with OH, LH had lesser amount of intraoperative bleeding (MD=?144.09, 95%CI ?194.25 to ?93.94, Plt;0.000 01), shorter hospital stay (MD=?5.48, 95%CI ?7.10 to ?3.85, Plt;0.000 01), and lower postoperative complications (OR=0.43, 95%CI 0.27 to 0.66, P=0.000 1). But there were no differences between the 2 groups in operation time (MD=?0.64, 95%CI ?22.95 to 21.68, P=0.96), perioperative death rate, 3-5 year survival rate, and tumor free survival rate. Conclusion LH is superior to OH in treating HCC for it is associated with smaller wound, lesser operative blood loss, shorter hospital stay, and lower postoperative complications. And it is similar as OH in operation time, perioperative death rate and 3-5 year survival rate. So LH is safe and feasible for treating HCC when its indications are strictly controlled. However, for the quantity and quality limitation of the included studies, this conclusion still requires to be further proved by performing large scale and high quality RCTs. It suggests that doctors should choose a best therapy for HCC patients according to an integrative disease assessment.