Objective To evaluate the diagnostic value of bedside screening instruments for aspiration in patients with stroke by network meta-analysis. Methods The electronic databases as PubMed, The Cochrane Library, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang, VIP and CBM were searched to collect studies on the diagnosis of aspiration by bedside screening instruments after stroke from inception to March, 2020. Two researchers independently retrieved the literature, extracted data and assessed risk of bias of included studies, then, network meta-analysis was performed by using the Stata 15.0 software. Results A total of 27 studies, involving 2 797 patients and 4 screening instruments (Water Swallow Test, Eating Assessment Tool-10,Gugging Swallowing Screen,Volume-Viscosity Swallow Test) were included. Surface under the cumulative ranking area results showed that the sensitivity of GUSS was the highest, followed by VVST, EAT-10, and WST, whereas the values of specificity were listed in descending order as follows WST>GUSS>EAT-10>VVST. Conclusion The sensitivity of GUSS and specificity of WST are relatively high for bedside screening of aspiration in stroke patients. This conclusion still needs to be further verified by large sample size and high-quality studies.