The impacts of climate change and their costs have proven to be larger than previously believed. Understanding the costs and benefits of adapting to the changing climate is necessary to make targeted and appropriate investment decisions. In this paper, we use a narrative review to synthesize the current literature on the economic case for climate adaptation. Our objective is to synthesize and understand the current literature on the economic case for climate adaptation, with the objective of assessing the value (economic and otherwise) of climate change adaptation, as well as the strength of the methods and evidence behind it. We find that skepticism is warranted about many of the estimates about costs and benefits of climate adaptation and their underlying assumptions, due to a range of complexities associated with (1) uncertainty associated with the range of potential economic impacts of climate change; (2) difficulties in non-market valuation; (3) lack of consistent data collection over time at multiple scales; and (4) distributional inequities in access to adaptation and recovery funding. While useful for broad advocacy purposes, many estimates in the literature fall short of the refinement and rigor needed to inform investment decision-making, particularly at micro and local scales. Most estimates rely on cost benefit analysis and do not effectively address these issues. An emergent and promising literature tackles alternative estimation strategies and attempts to address some of them, including the complexities of uncertainty and non-market valuation.