Objective To systematically assess the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture and moxibustion for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Methods Articles were searched from databases, i.e., CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data, CBM, Embase, and PubMed. Articles about RCT on acupuncture and moxibustion for rheumatoid arthritis and traditional medicine therapy were under meta-analysis. Results Totally 24 articles involving 2006 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis indicated that the overall effective rate of treatment in the group receiving acupuncture and moxibustion was higher than that in the drug group, with statistical significance [OR=2.73, 95%CI (2.18, 3.41), Z=8.78, P<0.000 01]. Sub-group analysis showed that:acupuncture and moxibustion showed statistical significance in decreasing serum RF levels compared with drug therapy [MD=-2.92, 95%CI (-5.60, -0.25), P<0.05]. Acupuncture and moxibustion showed statistical significance in decreasing serum ESR levels compared with drug therapy [MD=-2.99, 95%CI (-4.78, -1.21), P<0.05]. Acupuncture and moxibustion showed statistical significance in decreasing serum CPR levels compared with drug therapy [MD=-1.44, 95%CI (-2.44, -0.44), P <0.05]. Conclusion The overall effective rates of acupuncture and moxibustion for rheumatoid arthritis and the decreasing levels of RF, ESR, CRP are superior to drug therapy, but it still needs larger samples, multi-center, and high quality RCT to verify.