To evaluate the curative effect of external treatment of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) on insomnia by network Meta-analysis.Methods:China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)，Wanfang Data，China Biomedical Literature Database(SinoMed)，VIP，Embase，Cochrane Library，Web of Science，and PubMed were searched to collect randomized controlled trials(RCTs) on treatment of insomnia with TCM external treatments from the inception of the databases to September 2，2020.The quality of the included studies was evaluated and data were extracted.Revman 5.3 and Stata/SE 15.0 were used for data analysis with the frequency method.Results:A total of 25 articles and 6 TCM external treatments were finally included，involving 1 796 patients.Network Meta-analysis showed that tuina，electroacupuncture，needling，foot bath，and warming needle moxibustion were significantly different from oral estazolam tablets in improving the spleen quality of insomnia patients; significant differences were also observed between tuina and needling，electroacupuncture and warming needle moxibustion，needling and warming needle moxibustion; there was no difference between other treatments.The surface under the cumulative ranking curve(SUCRA) value was ranked from high to low as follows：warming needle moxibustion，foot bath，tuina，electroacupuncture，auricular point pressing，needling，estazolam tablets.Conclusion:TCM external treatments had significant effect in improving insomnia，and warming needle moxibustion had the highest possibility of becoming the optimal treatment method.Due to the quantity and quality of the included literature，the conclusion still needs to be confirmed with more high-quality，large-sample clinical studies covering a variety of TCM external treatments.