Objective To evaluate the effect of different topical fluorides for preventing dental caries in children. Methods Literature was searched according to the methods of systematic review in the following databases: CENTRAL, Medline, EMbase, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data, CBM and Gray literature databases such as Open Grey and National Technical Information Service (NTIS) online, and the relevant journals and professional materials were also searched manually. The quality of the selected studies was appraised using Cochrane criteria, and then Meta-analysis was conducted suing RevMan 5.0, GRADEprofiler and Stata.11 software. Results 18 RCTs involving 19 359 children were included. A result of eight RCTs showed that the prevalence rate of caries of the fluoride varnish group (50.62%) was lower than that of the control group (70.89%) (OR=0.43, 95%CI 0.34 to 0.44, Plt;0.000 01). A result of four RCTs showed that the prevalence rate of caries of the fluoride ion group (32.04%) was lower than that of the control group (44.94%) (OR=0.50, 95%CI 0.45 to 0.55, P=0.02). A result of six RCTs showed that the prevalence rate of caries of the fluoride foam group (55.90%) was lower than that of the control group (67.20%) (OR=0.53, 95%CI 0.47 to 0.60, Plt;0.000 01). The quality of the above three results was low according to the GRADE analysis. Conclusion This systematic review shows topical fluoride is effective to prevent dental caries in children without side effects. But more high-quality RCTs are needed to prove this conclusion due to the low quality of the included studies.