Objective To explore the incidence of catheter-related bloodstream infection (CRBSI) in the process of intravenous infusion therapy through midline catheters (MC) and peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC) by Meta-analysis, so as to provide reference for clinical prevention and treatment of CRBSI in the process of intravenous infusion therapy. Methods Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane Library, ProQuest, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, VIP and China Biology Medicine (CBM) were searched to collect the related studies of CRBSI in the process of intravenous infusion therapy through MC and PICC, the retrieval time was from the establishment of the database to January 2020. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, two researchers independently searched and screened literatures as well as evaluated and extracted data, Revman 5.3 software was used for analysis. Results A total of 15 studies were collected, involving 34 235 patients, incidence of CRBSI in MC and PICC groups were 0.58% (43/7 392) and 0.53% (142/26 843) respectively. Meta-analysis showed that incidence of CRBSI in MC group was lower than that in PICC group (RR=0.63, 95%CI=0.43-0.93, P=0.02). Except that there was no significant difference in incidence of CRBSI between MC group and PICC group in other country subgroups (P>0.05), incidence of CRBSI in MC group was lower than that of PICC group in Chinese subgroup (RR=0.21, 95%CI=0.07-0.64) and American subgroup (R=0.53, 95%CI=0.31-0.89), but in British subgroup was higher than PICC group (RR=3.67, 95%CI=1.18-11.37), diffe-rences were all significant (all P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in the incidence of CRBSI between MC group and PICC group in adult subgroup and other subgroups (all P>0.05). Incidence of CRBSI in MC group was lower than PICC group in randomized controlled study subgroup (RR=0.12, 95%CI=0.02-0.66, P=0.01), but incidence of CRBSI in MC group and PICC group was not significantly different in retrospective cohort study subgroup(P>0.05). The overall stability of each study was common, stability among the studies with good and moderate quality was general, without significant publication bias. Conclusion Meta-analysis on the risk of CRBSI in the process of intravenous infusion therapy through MC and PICC is firstly systematically reviewed, incidence of CRBSI in MC group is lower than that in PICC group in the process of intravenous infusion therapy, MC is preferentially selected for intravenous infusion for patients under the same conditions. More high-quality studies and studies about children are needed to explore the risk of CRBSI in the process of intravenous infusion therapy through MC and PICC.