The majority of parotid tumours are benign, making parotid surgery a compromise between adequate tumour excision and preservation of function and facial harmony. Besides the traditional superficial or total parotidectomy, less invasive techniques have been described with similar recurrent rates. The aim of this review is to assess the evidence in the published literature and to summarise the advantages and disadvantages of the available techniques. A systematic search in Pubmed for studies on surgery of benign parotid tumours (BPTs) published between January 2000 and January 2012 was conducted. Case series with a clear description of the surgical technique and a minimum number of 10 patients were included. Four hundred sixty-three articles were found, 49 abstracts reviewed and 37 case series were selected for this review. The surgical techniques for benign parotid tumours can largely be grouped into facial nerve dissecting (superficial parotidectomy, partial superficial parotidectomy and total parotidectomy) and non-nerve dissecting techniques (extracapsular dissection). With all of the currently used techniques, a low recurrence (