The aim of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of the ImmunoCyt test compared with urine cytology in detecting bladder cancer. A systematic literature search was performed to locate all publications reporting on the diagnostic accuracy of the ImmunoCyt test for bladder cancer. Data were extracted from 2×2 tables or calculated from reported accuracy data. Collected data were meta-analyzed for sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (LR), negative LR, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), and summary receiver operator characteristic (sROC) curve analysis. We applied the Meta-DiSc 1.4 and STATA 13.0 software to the meta-analysis. Seven separate studies consisting of 1,602 patients with bladder cancer were considered in the meta-analysis. We found that the ImmunoCyt test had a higher sensitivity than the urine cytology test [0.725, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.683-0.765 vs. 0.566, 95% CI, 0.521-0.611], but the specificity, positive LR, negative LR, DOR, area under the curve (AUC) and Q index of the ImmunoCyt test were lower compared with the urine cytology test. In addition, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive LR, negative LR, DOR, AUC, and Q index of the combined method (combination of ImmunoCyt and cytology) were 0.833, 0.644, 2.804, 0.228, 13.50, 0.8554 and 0.7863, respectively. The results of the Eggers test showed no publication bias (P>0.05). In conclusion, specificity, positive LR, negative LR, DOR, the AUC, and the Q index of the urine cytology test may be superior to the ImmunoCyt test, but the ImmunoCyt test has greater sensitivity than the urine cytology test. Use of ImmunoCyt and cytology in combination has the potential to improve the sensitivity and promises to be an alternative in the detection of bladder cancer.