Background Systemic inflammatory response (SIR) plays important roles in initiation, promotion and progression of tumor. However, the prognostic role of preoperative circulating neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) (known as a marker of SIR) in human primary bladder cancer (BC) undergoing radical cystectomy (RC) remains controversial. Hence, we performed this meta-analysis to better understand the role of preoperative circulating NLR in prognosis prediction for primary BC patients undergoing RC. Methods We searched PubMed, Embase and EBSCO to identify the studies and computed extracted data with STATA 12.0. Results A total of 11,945 patients with BC from 18 published studies were incorporated into this meta-analysis. We found that elevated NLR was significantly associated with decreased 3-year and 5-year overall survival (OS), 1-year, 3-year and 5-year recurrence-free survival (RFS), but not with 1-year or 10-year OS, or 10-year RFS in primary BC patients who underwent RC. The results also showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) had a significant impact on the negative prognostic effect of NLR. In addition, high NLR significantly correlated with unfavorable clinicopathological features of BC. Conclusion Elevated preoperative circulating NLR leads to an unfavorable outcome in primary BC undergoing RC, especially in patients without NAC, implicating that it might be a valuable prognostic index for these patients.