question: BACKGROUND: Clinical symptoms of adults and paediatric inpatients with COVID‐19 disease are conflicting. This meta‐analysis was conducted to assess the effect of age of COVID‐19 inpatient on the severity of the disease. METHODS: A systematic literature search up to January 2021 was performed and 5 studies included 910 inpatients with COVID‐19 disease at the baseline of the study; 773 of them were adult inpatients, and 137 of them were paediatric inpatients. They reported a comparison between adults and children with COVID‐19 in the level of symptomatic severity, clinical features, computed tomography (CT) results and laboratory results. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated assessing the effect of age of COVID‐19 inpatient on the severity of the disease using the dichotomous method with a random or fixed‐effect model. RESULTS: Adults with COVID‐19 disease had significantly lower number of mild cases (OR, 0.18; 95% CI, 0.04‐0.77, P = .02); higher number severe cases (OR, 4.90; 95% CI, 2.03‐11.83, P < .001); higher number of cases with fever (OR, 4.14; 95% CI, 2.31‐7.43, P < .001); and higher number of cases with CT positive COVID‐19 disease (OR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.17‐3.55, P = .001) compared with children. However, no significant difference was found between adults and children in number of cases with shortness of breath (OR, 1.44; 95% CI, 0.41‐5.04, P = .57); dry cough (OR, 1.77; 95% CI, 0.64‐4.93, P = .27); leukopenia (OR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.47‐1.66, P = .71); lymphopenia (OR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.49‐1.88, P = .91); high platelets (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.17‐1.02, P = .05); and high D‐dimer (OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.43‐1.56, P = .54). CONCLUSIONS: Adults with COVID‐19 disease have a much higher level of symptomatic severity, fever and CT‐positive COVID‐19 disease than children. However, as shown in our results, the laboratory data were similar in both groups.