The market-incentive emission trading system is an important element for improving urban governance. The main objective of this study was to examine the hypothesis that market-incentive environmental regulations have an impact on urban resilience. The entropy method was used to construct six dimension-specific objectives to comprehensively portray the level of urban resilience, and then the double difference method and the moderation model were used to investigate the impact of market-incentive environmental regulation on urban resilience and its mechanisms. The results show that up to two-thirds of cities are at a low resilience level. Second, the emission trading system significantly enhances the resilience of cities over time. Moreover, the effects of energy saving and emission reduction, marketization level and innovation vitality are important mechanisms for improving the resilience of cities. Furthermore, the lower the degree of green development of the city itself, the more significant the effect of the emission trading system on improving the resilience of the city. For different types of resource-based cities, the enhancement effects on urban resilience are growth cities, regeneration cities, mature cities and declining cities in descending order. To improve the level of urban resilience, it is necessary to release the policy dividend of regional coordination and to deepen development according to regional endowment differences. Finally, the findings of this analysis can provide some theoretical support and experience reference for deepening the market-incentive reform of environmental governance and promoting the high-quality development of resilient cities.