Abstract Purpose To explore the correlation between the initial recurrence site and survival after recurrence (PRS) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods We collected 588 stages I–III NSCLC patients with recurrence after radical resection in Yunnan Cancer Hospital from January 2013 to December 2018. We used Kaplan–Meier survival curves to compare PRS in patients with different site recurrences. The univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyze the impact of the initial recurrence site on PRS. Results The recurrence site included the lung (n = 109), brain (n = 113), bone (n = 79), abdomen (n = 28), pleura (n = 24), lymph node (n = 81), and multisite (n = 154). In the total population, patients with multisite recurrence had substantially worse PRS (24.8 months, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 17.46–32.20) than that of patients without multiple sites recurrence (42.2 months, 95% CI 32.24–52.10) (P = 0.026). However, patients with lung recurrence had better RFS (63.1 months, 95% CI 51.13–74.00) than those who did not (31.0 months, 95% CI 25.10–36.96) (P