BackgroundRegional anesthesia appears to reduce cancer recurrence, but the optimal anesthesia modality for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) were still under debate. Therefore, we sought to assess the effect of regional and GA only upon the recurrence and long-term prognosis of NMIBC through this meta-analysis.MethodsWe performed an extensive literature search of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (up to October 30, 2022) to identify eligible articles on the possible impact of different anesthetic modalities for the recurrence rate of NMIBC.ResultsEight studies comprising 3764 participants, including 2117 subjects with RA and 1647 with GA, were finally enrolled. Cancer recurrence rate was significantly lower in subjects with RA than those with GA (RR 0.84, 95%CI 0.72–0.98,P= 0.03). We didn’t detect the differences between GA and RA in the time of recurrence (SMD 2.07, 95% CI -0.49–4.63,P= 0.11) and cancer progression (RR 1.14, 95%CI 0.71–1.84,P= 0.59). Results from subgroup analysis demonstrated that spinal anesthesia could significantly decrease the incidence of cancer recurrence in comparison with general anesthesia (RR 0.80, 95%CI 0.72–0.88,P< 0.001) and high-risk NMIBC patients who received RA tended to have less recurrence (HR 0.55, 95%CI 0.39–0.79,P= 0.001) than those receiving GA.ConclusionsRA, especially spinal anesthesia, may be effective in reducing the recurrence rate after transurethral resection of NMIBC. More prospective experimental and clinical studies are needed to validate our findings.Trial registrationINPLASY registration INPLASY2022110097.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12871-023-02136-7.