The aim of this study was to estimate whether kinematic alignment (KA) improves knee function or clinical outcomes compared with mechanical alignment (MA) in the short term after total knee arthroplasty (TKA). We searched the literature for randomized controlled trials published before January 2020 from PubMed, EMBASE, Google, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and other databases. The observation markers included "The Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) Osteoarthritis Index," "Knee Society Score (KSS)," "Oxford Knee Score (OKS)," "combined Knee Society Score (KSS)," "Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS)," "European Quality of Life Measure-5 Domain-5-Level (EQ-5D-5L)," range of motion (ROM), lower limb alignment, ligament release, and complications. A total of 11 randomized controlled trial studies were included in the study. During the follow-up of 6-24 months, the KA-TKA group was superior to the MA-TKA group in terms of WOMAC scores, combined KSS, KSS, knee function scores, and knee range of flexion, but there was no significant difference in EQ-5D-5L, KOOS, KOOS (symptoms, pain, ADL, sports, and quality of life), complications, knee range of extension, hip-knee-ankle (HKA) angle, tibial component slope angle, lateral distal femoral angle (LDFA) or medial proximal tibial angle (MPTA) angle between the MA-TKA group and the MA-TKA group (P > 0.05). Our meta-analysis revealed that the incidence of ligament release in the MA-TKA group was higher than that in the KA-TKA group. This meta-analysis shows that the KA-TKA group had better clinical outcomes and knee range of flexion than the MA-TKA group at short-term follow-up.