The aim of the present study was to evaluate the ability of seven staging systems to predict 3- and 6-month and cumulative survival rates of patients with advanced hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Data were collected from 220 patients with HBV-associated HCC who did not receive any standard anticancer treatment. Participants were patients at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University from September 2008 to June 2010. The participants were classified according to the Chinese University Prognostic Index (CUPI), the Cancer of the Liver Italian Program (CLIP), Japan Integrated Staging (JIS), China Integrated Score (CIS) systems, Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC), Okuda and tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging "systems at the time of diagnosis and during patient follow-up. The sensitivity and specificity of the predictive value of each staging system for 3- and 6-month mortality were analyzed by relative operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis with a non-parametric test being used to compare the area under curve (AUC) of the ROC curves. In addition, log-rank tests and Kaplan-Meier estimator survival curves were applied to compare the overall survival rates of the patients with HCC defined as advanced using the various staging systems, and the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and likelihood ratio tests (LRTs) were used to evaluate the predictive value for overall survival in patients with advanced HCC. Using univariate and multivariate Cox's model analyses, the factors predictive of survival were also identified. A total of 220 patients with HBV-associated HCC were analyzed. Independent prognostic factors identified by multivariate analyses included tumor size, a-fetoprotein levels, blood urea nitrogen levels, the presence or absence of portal vein thrombus, Child-Pugh score and neutrophil count. When predicting 3-month survival, the AUCs of CLIP, CIS, CUPI, Okuda, TNM, JIS and BCLC were 0.806, 0.772, 0.751, 0.731, 0.643, 0.754 and 0.622, respectively. When predicting 6-month survival, the AUCs of CLIP, CIS, CUPI, Okuda, TNM, JIS and BCLC were 0.828, 0.729, 0.717, 0.692, 0.664, 0.746 and 0.575, respectively. For 3-month mortality, the prognostic value of CLIP ranked highest, followed by CIS; for 6-month mortality, the prognostic value of CLIP also ranked highest, followed by JIS. No significant difference between the AUCs of CLIP and CIS (P>0.05) in their predictive value for 3-month mortality was observed. The AUC of CLIP was significantly higher compared with that of the other staging systems (P<0.05) for predicting 6-month mortality. The x(2) values from the LRTs of CLIP, CIS, CUPI, Okuda, TNM, JIS and BCLC were 75.6, 48.4, 46.7, 36.0, 21.0, 46.8 and 7.24, respectively. The AIC values of CLIP, CIS, CUPI, Okuda, TNM, JIS and BCLC were 1601.5, 1632.3, 1629.9, 1641.1, 1654.8, 1627.4 and 1671.1, respectively. CLIP exhibited the highest x2 value and lowest AIC value, indicating that CLIP has the highest predictive value of cumulative survival rate. In the selected patients of the present study, CLIP was the staging system best able to predict 3- and 6-month and overall survival rates. CIS ranked second in predicting 3 -month mortality.