Objective To investigate the clinical effect and safety of flow diversion device (FDD) versus coil embolization therapy (CET) in the treatment of intracranial aneurysm through a meta-analysis.Methods PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, CNKI, and Wanfang Data were searched for studies which were published up to March 2017 and met the inclusion criteria, and the reference lists of related articles were checked manually. The efficacy endpoints were complete occlusion rate and recurrence rate of intracranial aneurysm, and the safety endpoint was the incidence rate of complications.Results A total of 14 clinical studies were included, i.e., 13 observational studies and 1 randomized controlled trial. There were 1234 patients in total, with 449 in the FDD group and 785 in the CET group. The meta-analysis showed that compared with CET, FDD significantly increased the complete occlusion rate of intracranial aneurysm (odds ratio [OR]=3.40, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.54-4.55, P<0.01) and reduced postoperative recurrence rate (OR=0.12, 95%CI: 0.06-0.24, P<0.01). There was no significant difference in the incidence rate of complications between the two groups (OR=1.11, 95%CI: 0.64-1.93, P=0.72).Conclusions Compared with CET, FDD shows a better clinical effect in the treatment of intracranial aneurysm and does not increase the incidence rate of complications.