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Abstract Background There is a lack of clinical data on the validity of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the treatment of ovarian cancer. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of the adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens on the clinical outcomes in patients with advanced ovarian cancer. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of 574 patients with advanced ovarian cancer admitted to four Lithuanian oncogynaecology departments during 1993–2000. The conventional combined treatment of cytoreductive surgery and platinum-based chemotherapy was applied to both the group that underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy (n = 213) and to the control group (n = 361). The selection criterion for neoadjuvant chemotherapy was large extent of the disease. Overall and progression-free survival rates and survival medians were calculated using life tables and the Kaplan-Meier method. Results There was no difference in median overall survival between stage III patients treated with adjuvant chemotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy (25.9 months vs. 29.3 months, p = 0.2508) and stage IV patients (15.4 months vs. 14.9 months, p = 0.6108). Similarly, there was no difference in median progression-free survival between stage III patients treated with adjuvant chemotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy (15.7 months vs. 17.5 months, p = 0.1299) and stage IV patients (8.7 months vs. 8.2 months, p = 0.1817). There was no difference in the rate of the optimal cytoreductive surgery between patients who underwent the neoadjuvant chemotherapy and patients primarily treated with surgery (n = 134, 63% vs. n = 242, 67%, respectively). Conclusion There was no difference in progression-free or overall survival and in the rate of optimal cytoreductive surgery between the neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy groups despite the fact that patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy had a more extensive disease. Multivariate analysis failed to prove that neoadjuvant chemotherapy could be considered as an independent prognostic factor for survival, and the findings need to be investigated in the future prospective randomised studies.