Abstract: Objective To explore the relationship between resting heart rate and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WANFANG DATA, PubMed and Web of Science were searched to acquire the studies concentrating on resting heart rate and T2DM risk. All the studies were screened according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Quality of the studies was evaluated and data were extracted. The meta-analysis were performed with Stata 11.0. Subgroup analyses concentrating on race, the measurement method of resting heart rate, follow-up time and the sample size were conducted to explore the heterogeneity sources. Results A total of 11 prospective cohort studies were included and the whole sample size was 212 891. Compared to the lowest resting heart rate group, the pooled relative risk of T2DM in the highest group was 1.54 (1.29-1.84). Subgroup analysis showed that the risk of T2DM were 1.67 (1.38-2.03) for the Asian and 1.29 (1.02-1.62) for the Caucasian, respectively. According to the Begg's test (P=0.350) and Egger's test (P=0.662), no publication bias was observed. Conclusions Elevated resting heart rate can increase the risk of T2DM and it also indicate that the risk of T2DM could be decreased by controlling resting heart rate.