Objective To systematically evaluate the profitability and efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage Ⅲa non-small cell lung cancer. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCT) on neoadjuvant chemotherapy for stage Ⅲa non-small cell lung cancer were collected from WangFang Data database, Web of Science, PubMed, EMbase, CNKI, The Cochrane Library, VIP and CBM databases. From building to October 2017. After two independent reviewers screened the literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of being included in the study, Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 15 RCT were included, including 1899 non-small cell lung cancer patients. The results of Meta analysis showed that the resection rate of R0 in neoadjuvant chemotherapy group was significantly higher than that in control group (OR=2.04, 95%CI 1.52 to 2.74, P<0.05), and there was no significant difference in postoperative complications between two groups (OR=1.23, 95%CI 0.89 to 1.69, P=0.22). In terms of survival rate, the neoadjuvant chemotherapy group could improve patients for one year (OR=1.38, 95%CI 1.01 to 1.88, P=0.04), three years (OR=1.57, 95%CI 1.16 to 2.12, P=0.004) and 5 years survival rate (OR=2.09, 95%CI 1.24 to 3.53, P=0.005) significance of learning. Conclusion Compared with the control group, neoadjuvant chemotherapy can improve the surgical R0 resection rate and the one, three and five year survival rate of patients with stage Ⅲa non-small cell lung cancer without increasing the postoperative complications. Due to the quantity and quality limitations of the included studies, the above conclusion still needs to be verified by more high-quality research.