BackgroundTo compare the oncological outcomes of patients with FIGO 2018 stage IIIC cervical cancer (CC) involving different local tumor factors who underwent abdominal radical hysterectomy (ARH), neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radical surgery (NACT), or radical chemoradiotherapy (R-CT).MethodsBased on tumor staging, patients with stage IIIC were divided into T1, T2a, T2b, and T3 groups. Kaplan–Meier and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis were used to compare their overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) of 5 years.ResultsWe included 4,086 patients (1,117, 1,019, 869, and 1,081 in the T1, T2a, T2b, and T3 groups, respectively). In the T1 group, NACT was correlated with a decrease in OS (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.631, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.150–2.315,P= 0.006) and DFS (HR = 1.665, 95% CI: 1.255–2.182,P< 0.001) than ARH. ARH and NACT were not correlated with OS (P= 0.226 andP= 0.921) or DFS (P= 0.343 andP= 0.535) than R-CT. In the T2a group, NACT was correlated with a decrease in OS (HR = 1.454, 95% CI: 1.057–2.000,P= 0.021) and DFS (HR = 1.529, 95% CI: 1.185–1.974,P= 0.001) than ARH. ARH and NACT were not correlated with OS (P= 0.736 andP= 0.267) or DFS (P= 0.714 andP= 0.087) than R-CT. In the T2b group, NACT was correlated with a decrease in DFS (HR = 1.847, 95% CI: 1.347–2.532,P< 0.001) than R-CT nevertheless was not correlated with OS (P= 0.146); ARH was not correlated with OS (P= 0.056) and DFS (P= 0.676). In the T3 group, the OS rates of ARH (n= 10), NACT (n= 18), and R-CT (n= 1053) were 67.5%, 53.1%, and 64.7% (P= 0.941), and the DFS rates were 68.6%, 45.5%, and 61.1%, respectively (P= 0.761).ConclusionR-CT oncological outcomes were not entirely superior to those of NACT or ARH under different local tumor factors with stage IIIC. NACT is not suitable for stage T1, T2a, and T2b. Nevertheless ARH is potentially applicable to stage T1, T2a, T2b and T3. The results of stage T3 require confirmation through further research due to disparity in case numbers in each subgroup.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-023-10801-w.