Background Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), an innovative image technique, renders visualization of ocular neovascularization through non-invasive means, which has been applied in recent years. Therefore, the present study was designed to assess the diagnostic value of OCTA in detecting the choroidal neovascularization (CNV). Methods In brief, PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases were systematically searched from January 2014 to June 2019. Afterwards, a meta-analysis was performed to determine the pooled diagnostic accuracy in a random-effects model using STATA 15.1 and Meta-Disc 1.4 software. Quality Assessment of diagnostic Accuracy Version 2 was used to evaluate the risk of bias of each study by Revman 5.3 software. In addition, a meta-regression model was further conducted to explore potential sources of heterogeneity. Results According to pre-set inclusion and exclusion criteria, 16 eligible studies were enrolled in this study. A total of 447 CNV eyes and 414 non-CNV eyes were included to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of OCTA. As a result, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (PLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and the area under the summary receiver operating characteristic curve (sROC-AUC) were 0.87 (95% CI 0.81–0.92), 0.97 (95% CI 0.92–0.99), 32.7 (95% CI 10.1–105.5), 0.13 (95% CI 0.08–0.20), 252 (95% CI 63–1011) and 0.96 (95% CI 0.94–0.97), respectively. Conclusions In summary, we demonstrated that OCTA was of high diagnostic value for detecting intraocular CNV.