To investigate the surgical and oncologic outcomes of laparoscopy compared with laparotomy in early-stage ovarian cancer, the authors reviewed medical records of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Korea, between January 2001 and December 2014. Forty-nine patients were diagnosed with FIGO Stage I or II epithelial ovarian cancer and 25 and 24 patients underwent surgical staging by laparoscopy and laparotomy, respectively. Most of the clinicopathologic characteristics showed no statistical difference between the two groups. However, incidence of intraoperative tumor rupture was higher in the laparoscopy group (6/25 [24%] vs. 1/24 [4.2%]), although the primary tumor size was smaller (7.9 ± 4.2 vs. 15.0 ± 5.9, p = 0.05). There was no statistical difference between laparotomy and laparoscopy groups according to five-year overall survival (77.2% vs. 81.7%, p = 0.53) or five-year disease-free survival (76.5% vs. 81.3%, p = 0.77). Laparoscopic staging surgery showed similar surgical and oncologic outcomes to the laparotomy procedure in early-stage ovarian cancer.