The invention discloses a meter searching method for meter file maintenance of multi-meter collecting equipment with multiple types of meter reading ports. The meter searching method comprises the following steps that the multi-meter collecting equipment receives a meter file maintaining instruction from an upstream port and receives a plurality of meter files with meter addresses as a foundation at the same time, and the multi-meter collecting equipment stores the meter files in FLASH; the multi-meter collecting equipment firstly chooses the RS-485 meter reading port and only searches meters from the RS-485 port, other ports are not used for searching meters temporarily, the multi-meter collecting equipment sends a broadcasting instruction for the RS-485 meter reading port at first, and the step c is performed if no reply. The meter searching method disclosed by the technical scheme of the invention has the advantages that meter searching is performed through set steps by analyzing power consumption characteristics of RS-485, micropower wireless, M-BUS, power line carrier and the like caused by meter searching of varieties meter reading ports and combining the characteristics of upstream meter file maintenance, so that power consumption of the multi-meter collecting equipment is the lowest after the multi-meter collecting equipment finishes a meter searching task.