By the end of 2020, 45 cities in the Chinese mainland operated 244 urban rail transit lines with a total length of 7,969.7 km, Urban rail transit in Chinese cities witnessed a steady growth both in operating scale and passenger traffic in 10 years. Recent studies have explored the environmental and social effects of urban rail transit; however lack in-depth discussion on economic growth. As a quasi-natural experiment, this paper empirically tests the effect of the opening of urban rail transit on urban economic growth based on the panel data of 286 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2020 and PSM-DID Model. Analysis results show that, rail transit drives urban economic growth. This effect has scale heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity. The findings of this study can provide a valuable reference for the government when it plans the layout of urban rail transit for construction.