Objective To investigate the efficacy of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation in patients with atrial fibrillation after catheter ablation. Methods Databases including PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang Data, and VIP were searched for randomized controlled trials on the efficacy of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation in patients with atrial fibrillation after catheter ablation. The patients were divided into cardiac rehabilitation group and control group, and the two groups were compared in terms of the recurrence rate of atrial fibrillation after surgery, peak oxygen uptake, and 6-minute walk test (6WMT) results. Revman 5.3 was used to perform the meta-analysis. Results A total of 9 articles were included, involving 976 patients in total, and there were 499 patients in the cardiac rehabilitation group and 473 patients in the control group. The meta-analysis showed that compared with the control group, the cardiac rehabilitation group had a significantly lower recurrence rate of atrial fibrillation after surgery (risk ratio = 0.77, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.63-0.92, P = 0.005) and significantly better improvements in peak oxygen uptake (mean difference [MD] = 4.77, 95% CI: 1.16-8.38, P <0.05) and 6WMT results (MD = 25.80, 95% CI: 16.25-35.35, P<0.00001). Conclusion Current evidence shows that exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation can reduce the recurrence of atrial fibrillation after surgery and improve peak oxygen uptake and 6WMT results in patients with atrial fibrillation.